how can i create a global variable called "dogpatch" with a value of "woof"
 

how do i create a global variable called "dogpatch" with a value of "woof" (in red hat, I am new at this and am trying to figure it out but i need help.

Hi, welcome to LQ :)

You must tell us what language you're writing your code in, as there's likely going to be some semantic and syntactic differences from language to language.

Sasha

[QUOTE=earthdog;3791589]how do i create a global variable called "dogpatch" with a value of "woof" (in red hat, I am new at this and am trying to figure it out but i need help.[/QUOT
i am writing my code in english

earthdog

[QUOTE=earthdog;3791607]i am writing my code in linux

Linux is not a language, it's an OS. The qn is which programming language eg do you mean bash (aka shell script)?
If so,

dogpatch=woof

note we don't put spaces around the '=', that's important. To retrieve the value you prefix the var name with '$' eg

echo $dogpatch

See these tutorials:
http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz
http://tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-G...tml/index.html
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/

HTH
Welcome to LQ
:)

right on, Im using the Korn shell
Earthdog

I get it know thanks chrism01

Well, korn is highly compatible with bash, but see http://kornshell.com/ for more ksh docs than you ever wanted :)
Also, please click the Blue Thumbs-up on someone's post to thank them as well.

The term "global variable" has a specific meaning in programing: I suspect what you are trying to do with ksh, is actually something a little different, since usually in shell scripts all variables are global. So, can you tell us what you are actually trying to achieve?

Evo2.

Seeing as we've established ksh (yes ?), the nearest thing to a 'global' var is to 'export' it.
A var set/declared in a given shell level is avail to the code at that level.
You can export it, but this only makes it available to any sub-shells called from the current env. You cannot export (or 'return') a var upwards in the shell tree.

This is true of shell scripting generally ie bash, ksh, sh etc.
See the docs I linked to.