Bash Variable Question

[shanenin]

I have been messing around with a bash script to test if characters are in a string

#!/bin/bash

read PASS
X=${#PASS}
Y=0
while (( Y < X )); do
    if [[ ${PASS:$Y:1} != [a-zA-Z1-9] ]]; then
        break 
    fi
    let Y+=1
done
(( Y == X ))

notice this line in particular

while (( Y < X )); do

I called my variables without using the $ like this $Y and $X, and it still works. WHY?

it also works like this

while (( $Y < $X )); do

Edited July 23, 2005 by shanenin

[jcl]

It works because it works. The Bourne shell is the wrong to place to look if you're trying to find consistency.

The POSIX definition of arithmetic substitution includes only the $(()) form. I think it also requires dollar prefixes for variables, but I'm not sure. The alterate syntaxes (both the bare (()) and the 'let' form) were introduced in ksh and adopted by bash.

[shanenin]

thanks for the explanation.

it turns out my script was pretty meaningless. I could have just done

[[ ${VAR} == *[^a-bA-B1-9]* ]]

or

[[ ${VAR} == *[^[:alnum:]]* ]]