I'm guessing that the line containing 'exec' is passing the contents of the .profile into the array emvlines

Not quite. ksh is launched. First, ksh is told to executed .profile. It's assumed here that .profile is a valid (ksh) shell script with no nasty side effects. Once .profile finishes executed, ksh is told to execute "env", which returns something akin to the following:

BLOCKSIZE=K
CC=cc
CFLAGS=-O2 -mcpu=pentiumpro -pipe
...
TEST=...
LIVE=...
TEACHING=...
...

[download]

That list is assigned to @envlines, and then parsed in the foreach loop.

In reply to Re^3: Unix Aliases? by ikegami
in thread Unix Aliases? by Ronnie

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