Thank to all of you! (List below). Here the solution (original posting below)
as stated by many of you:
This patch has just been released for this exact problem.
Patch-ID# 101610-01
Keywords: csh variable character
Synopsis: SunOS 5.3: csh variable name limited to 18 characters, instead of 20
Date: Apr/07/94
Problem Description:
1023533 csh variable name limited to 18 characters, instead of 20
The csh(1) man page indicates that a "variable name consists
of up to 20 letters and digits ...". However, if an attempt
is made to use a variable name of over 18 characters, a
"Variable syntax" error results.
-----------------------------------------
Apply patch 101071-03 for 4.1.3 and 101461-02 for 4.1.3_U1.
-----------------------------------------
others suggested using tcsh instead: to be found for instance in
tesla.ee.cornell.edu:/pub/tcsh
-----------------------------------------
Thanks to:
glenn@uniq.com.au (Glenn Satchell - Uniq Professional Services)
pallas@oclc.org (George Pallas)
Daniel Pommert <daniel@lternet.edu> or dPommert@LTERnet.Washington.edu
Ian Reddy <ian@sfu.ca>
Steve.Kirkpatrick@artecon.com (Stephen E. Kirkpatrick)
Adam Shostack <adam@bwh.harvard.edu>
Rich Schultz <rich@ccrwest.org>
knight@atmos.albany.edu (David J. Knight)
----- Begin Included Message -----
>From sun-managers-relay@ra.mcs.anl.gov Tue May 3 00:55:06 1994
From: ballisti@ifh.ee.ethz.ch
Date: Mon, 2 May 94 16:13:27 +0200
To: sun-managers@eecs.nwu.edu
Subject: environment variables
Hallo all.
I discovered that in the csh the environment variables cannot be longer than
18 characters. In the manual pages for csh I found:
Variable Substitution
The C shell maintains a set of variables, each of which is
composed of a name and a value. A variable name consists of
up to 20 letters and digits, and starts with a letter (the
underscore is considered a letter).
and
setenv [ VAR [ word ] ]
With no arguments, setenv displays all environment
variables. With the VAR argument sets the
environment variable VAR to have an empty (null)
value.
No mention of the limit of 18 characters.
I had the following behavior:
% setenv XUSERFILESEARCHPATH /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults
% echo $XUSERFILESEARCHPATH
Variable syntax.
% echo ${XUSERFILESEARCHPATH}
XUSERFILESEARCHPAT: Undefined variable.
% setenv XUSERFILESEARCHPAT /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults
% echo ${XUSERFILESEARCHPATH}
/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults
The "variable syntax" message shows that the "H" at the end is considered as
another parameter.
Where is this behavior (max 18 char) described? What did I miss?
Greeting to all. Ciao Ray
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Raymond Ballisti (Ray), ===>e-mail: ballisti@ifh.ee.ethz.ch <====
Electromagnetics Group, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH)
Laboratory for Electromagnetic Fields and Microwaves Electronics
ETH-Zentrum, CH-8092 Zurich, Switzerland.
Phone: ++41 1 632 2753; Fax: ++41 1 261 1026
-------------------------------------------------------------------
----- End Included Message -----
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