On Wed Jun 22 12:00:07 EDT 2011, fors...@terzarima.net wrote: > >ifs seems a holdover. it's only ever used in `{} yet > >it's a global inherited variable. so it's easy to write > >a script that assumes that ifs is set to the default. > > i wonder if it's best left alone. it isn't detailed enough > to crack many plausible formats, for instance full csv. > if i needed one of those formats to feed into a `{} i'd add > a filter that converted to quoted & space-separated fields > that the default ifs would crack.
yes. rc splitting is limiting, and i'd love a better idea. my argument isn't that this is great, but that it is better. like the type system in c. :-) as a lame example, ... the word splitting in `{} is good enough to handle many formats, including splitting by naïve word and line. at one point i rewrite iwhois to handle other registrars than network solutions, and it was very handy to have these functions fn split{ ifs=. x=`{echo -n $*} echo $x } fn permute{ while(! ~ $#* 0){ echo $*|sed 's/ /./g' shift } } to walk through whois databases for names like x.y.example.com.au to find the registered name without having a database of which database operates at which level. - erik