[Discuss] rsync v. cp in data migration

[invalid at pizzashack.org (Derek Martin)]

One last point:

On Sat, May 25, 2013 at 09:32:02AM -0400, Greg Rundlett (freephile) wrote:
> # we will use a prepared file 'users' whose contents are a list of users,
> one user per line
> while read USER

The variable $USER is set for you by the system when you log in, and
some things may depend on it (this is a very old Unix feature, and
I've forgotten which--most things should no longer do this, for the
reason I'm describing now).  If you change the value of $USER, any
such things may break.  Generally the convention is to use upper case
names for environment variables (i.e. things you want to have
persistence across sessions/processes/etc.), and shell scripts should
use lower case names for their variables to avoid unintended conflicts
like this.

-- 
Derek D. Martin    http://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
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