I have the following code in my ~/.bashrc:
date=$(which date) date() { if [[ $1 == -R || $1 == --rfc-822 ]]; then # Output RFC-822 compliant date string. # e.g. Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:18:11 +0100 $date | sed "s/[^ ][^ ]*$/$($date +%z)/" else $date "$@" fi } This works fine, as far as I can tell. Is there a reason to avoid having a variable and a function with the same name?
It's alright apart from being confusing. Besides, they are not the same:
$ date=/bin/ls $ type date date is hashed (/bin/date) $ type $date /bin/ls is /bin/ls $ moo=foo $ type $moo -bash: type: foo: not found $ function date() { true; } $ type date date is a function date () { true*emphasized text* } $ which true /bin/true $ type true true is a shell builtin Whenever you type a command, bash looks in three different places to find that command. The priority is as follows:
Variables are prefixed with a dollar sign, which makes them different from all of the above. To compare to your example: $date and date are not the same thing. So It's not really possible to have the same name for a variable and a function because they have different "namespaces".
You may find this somewhat confusing, but many scripts define "method variables" at the top of the file. e.g.
SED=/bin/sed AWK=/usr/bin/awk GREP/usr/local/gnu/bin/grep The common thing to do is type the variable names in capitals. This is useful for two purposes (apart from being less confusing):
You can't really check like this:
if [ "`which binary`" ]; then echo it\'s ok to continue.. ;fi Because which will give you an error if binary has not yet been hashed (found in a path folder).
Since you always have to use $ to dereference a variable in Bash, you're free to use any name you like.
Beware of overriding a global, though.
See also:
http://tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-Guide/html/sect_03_02.html
a=1; b() { printf 2; }; c=$(( a + $( b; ) )); declare -p a c;An alternative to using a variable: use bash's command keyword (see the manual or run help command from a prompt):
date() { case $1 in -R|--rfc-2822) command date ... ;; *) command date "$@" ;; esac } 