[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: [Help-bash] The difference between $* and "$*"?
From: |
Seth David Schoen |
Subject: |
Re: [Help-bash] The difference between $* and "$*"? |
Date: |
Sat, 1 Feb 2014 10:58:32 -0800 |
User-agent: |
Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) |
Peng Yu writes:
> Hi,
>
> [...]
>
> I'm trying to understand the different between $* and "$*". The
> following shows that they behave differently when IFS is not the
> default. But the above paragraph from the manual does not explain
> this. Could anybody let me know if this is documented somewhere else
> in the manual and how to understand the difference? Thanks.
Hi,
The difference is whether it "expands to a single word" or to multiple
words.
#!/bin/bash
cd /tmp
echo "... this is the file with a space in its name" > "X Y"
echo "... this is the file X" > X
echo "... this is the file Y" > Y
set -- X Y
echo "Here is the unquoted version:"
cat $*
echo "Here is the quoted version:"
cat "$*"
In the two resulting invocations of cat, its argv argument arrays were,
first,
["/bin/cat", "X", "Y"]
and second
["/bin/cat/", "X Y"]
If IFS had been ":", the argv for cat would have been
["/bin/cat/", "X:Y"]
--
Seth David Schoen <address@hidden> | No haiku patents
http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | means I've no incentive to
FD9A6AA28193A9F03D4BF4ADC11B36DC9C7DD150 | -- Don Marti
- [Help-bash] The difference between $* and "$*"?, Peng Yu, 2014/02/01
- Re: [Help-bash] The difference between $* and "$*"?,
Seth David Schoen <=
- Re: [Help-bash] The difference between $* and "$*"?, Chet Ramey, 2014/02/02
- Re: [Help-bash] The difference between $* and "$*"?, Peng Yu, 2014/02/02
- Re: [Help-bash] The difference between $* and "$*"?, Eric Blake, 2014/02/03
- Re: [Help-bash] The difference between $* and "$*"?, Eric Blake, 2014/02/03
- Re: [Help-bash] The difference between $* and "$*"?, Chet Ramey, 2014/02/03
Re: [Help-bash] The difference between $* and "$*"?, Bob Proulx, 2014/02/01