Re: [Help-bash] The difference between $* and "$*"?

[Eric Blake]

On 02/03/2014 06:59 AM, Eric Blake wrote:

>> "When not within double quotes, each positional parameter expands to a
>> separate word."
>>
>> It seems to me that that could have eliminated the confusion.
> 
> No, because that's not quite true.  Eliminating the quotes means that
> positional parameters are ALSO subject to word-splitting:
> 
> $ set -- 'a  b' 'c'
> $ args() { printf "$#:"; for arg; do printf " -$arg-"; done; echo; }
> $ args $*
> 3: -a- -b- -c-
> $ args "$*"
> 1: -a  b c-
> 
> If each parameter expands to a separate word, with no further word
> splitting, then I would have expected output of "2: -a  b- -c-".

Another proof that word-splitting is performed on the results of
unquoted $* (at least in contexts where word-splitting matters):

$ set -- 'a  b' 'c:d'
$ IFS=:
$ args $*
3: -a  b- -c- -d-
$ IFS=': '
$ args $*
4: -a- -b- -c- -d-
$ IFS=$' \t\n'


-- 
Eric Blake   eblake redhat com    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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