Re: [Help-bash] How to understand "set --"?

[Greg Wooledge]

On Tue, Feb 18, 2014 at 10:12:26PM -0600, Peng Yu wrote:
> ~/linux/test/bash/man/builtin/set/--$ x="'abc def'"
> ~/linux/test/bash/man/builtin/set/--$ set -- $x

If you want to store a list of strings, you CANNOT do so in a scalar
variable (like your x="..." above).  You must use an array.

If on the other hand you wanted the single quotes to be part of the
literal data, so that x contains just a single string which includes
that punctuation, then you need to quote "$x" on the second line to
avoid word splitting and globbing of the result.

These two goals are completely exclusive.  You either want a list of
strings, OR you want a single string with weird crap in it.  We would
need to know which one you wanted in order to advise you on the
proper syntax.

x=(this 'is an' "array of $foo" "$bar")
set -- "address@hidden"

x=$'This is a \'single string\' with literal "single-quotes" inside it'
set -- "$x"