Question

I am new to shell scripting and I need some help on the following problem:

I have script. It has a global variable defined as follows:

ARCHIVE_USER=user1                               

Then, in a method, I am changing the values for these variables:

test_function(){

  ARCHIVE_USER=user2
  test_function2()
}

test_function2(){
  echo ARCHIVE_USER
}

I want test_function2 to print “user2” instead of “user1” because in the test_function I have renamed the variable value to “user2”, but when I run it, it is always giving me “user1” as the output. What am I doing wrong here?

Answer 1

This script works as you expect it should, i.e. it prints “B”.

#!/usr/bin/bash

TEST=A

test_a()
{ 
    TEST=B
    test_b
}

test_b()
{
    echo $TEST
}

test_a

So, my question to you is how are you calling your test_function()?