Re: [Help-bash] Updating global variable from recursing function.

[Greg Wooledge]

On Mon, Apr 02, 2012 at 10:14:07PM +0200, Frans de Boer wrote:
> I tested it on a directory structure of 7 level deep. The counter did 
> well but when finally returning the count decreases with every return 
> until it stop at the first instance of mdirtree() where the count was 
> correct. So, calling from main-func-func worked fine, but when the last 
> function repeated itself one or more times, it went wrong.
> 
> I try a simple example myself to look if it is due to the code 
> size/complexity or something else.

A simple recursive function with depth counter:

imadev:~$ cat foo 
#!/bin/bash

input=/one/two/three

traverse() {
  ((maxdepth++))
  if [[ $1 = */* ]]; then
    traverse "${1#*/}"
  fi
}

maxdepth=0
traverse "$input"
echo "maxdepth=$maxdepth"

imadev:~$ ./foo
maxdepth=4