Arithmetic operators short-circuit just as in C. The rules for arithmetic
apply only to the actual arithmetic evaluation step. Arithmetic contexts
evaluate expressions derived from the results of prior expansions. Think of
shell arithmetic as a mini-language.
`a' becomes 10 here, because the side-effectful expansion happens before
arithmetic is evaluated.
$ ( set -x; a= b=; (( a=b, a+=${b:=5} )); echo "$a" )
+ a=
+ b=
+ (( a=b, a+=5 ))
+ echo 10
10
There are 3 completely separate sets of short-circuiting && and || operators
in different contexts. This will yield 0 for initial values of `a' between 1
and 4:
a=2; [[ 0 -ne --a" && "--a && --a -ne 0 ]] && let --a; echo $a
10 factorial (bash/ksh93/zsh):
$ f=n=n?n--*f:1 let n=10 f
$ echo "$n"
3628800
--
Dan Douglas
