Re: [Help-bash] inconsistency in expansions

[John Kearney]

Am 07.05.2012 14:55, schrieb Bill Gradwohl:

On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 6:29 AM, Greg Wooledge <address@hidden> wrote:

On Sun, May 06, 2012 at 01:24:09PM -0600, Bill Gradwohl wrote:
> set -- "The cat " "ate the " "canary"
> echo $#
> x=$#
> declare string
> string="${*%${$#}}"

What the bloody hell is that supposed to DO?

Sorry - I thought it was obvious. I want all of the passed parameters in one string, except the last passed parameter for how ever many parameters there are.
 

all you need is
string="${*:1:$#-1}"

> I expected all of them to work.

What is "work"?

The last example works. I expected the rest to also work as $x evaluates to 3 and $# evaluates to 3.

I got 3 different results, when I was expecting 1 result. I want to understand how each is different, and WHY I got the results I got.

--
Bill Gradwohl

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