September 25, 2008

change CVS port number

On the CVS client machine, if you need to use a different port than the default one to access your CVS server, and you are using PSERVER method in your CVSROOT, simply add this environment variable:

export CVS_CLIENT_PORT=XXXXX

and then cvs login, cvs will pick up the new port.

This does not seem to be well documented.

Special shell variables


Special shell variables

There are some variables which are set internally by the shell and which are available to the user:

Name Description

$1 - $9 these variables are the positional parameters.

$0 the name of the command currently being executed.

$# the number of positional arguments given to this
invocation of the shell.

$? the exit status of the last command executed is
given as a decimal string. When a command
completes successfully, it returns the exit status
of 0 (zero), otherwise it returns a non-zero exit
status.

$$ the process number of this shell - useful for
including in filenames, to make them unique.

$! the process id of the last command run in
the background.

$- the current options supplied to this invocation
of the shell.

$* a string containing all the arguments to the
shell, starting at $1.

$@ same as above, except when quoted.


Notes

$* and $@ when unquoted are identical and expand into the arguments.

"$*" is a single word, comprising all the arguments to the shell, joined together with spaces. For example '1 2' 3 becomes "1 2 3".

"$@" is identical to the arguments received by the shell, the resulting list of words completely match what was given to the shell. For example '1 2' 3 becomes "1 2" "3"