Thanks to all that responded.
here are a few that helped the most
It means if $inst not defined, use the value following the ':-', which
in this case is nothing. This will twig the -z flag without causing the
shell to complain about null variables (not needed in ksh).
Tom
Means;
if the varibale inst is set with a value use that value, if it is not set
with a
value
then assign } to the variable inst
D.T.
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