A variable modified inside a while loop is not remembered

Question

In the following program, if I set the variable $foo to the value 1 inside the first if statement, it works in the sense that its value is remember

Answer 1

Hmmm... I would almost swear that this worked for the original Bourne shell, but don't have access to a running copy just now to check.

There is, however, a very trivial workaround to the problem.

Change the first line of the script from:

#!/bin/bash

to

#!/bin/ksh

Et voila! A read at the end of a pipeline works just fine, assuming you have the Korn shell installed.