On Sat, Jun 24, 2017 at 09:10:34PM +0700, Robert Elz wrote: [...] > The bugs in various implementations cause problems, yes, dealing with > someone else's mistakes (and especially doing it in a way that things > still work when the bugs get fixed) can be difficult. > > But the rules, no, the rules for $* are actually trivial. > > Unquoted, $* (or $@ which is identical) is exactly the same > as the sequence > > $1 $2 $3 ... > > would be, if we knew in advance how many of those we should write > (which can be 0 of them of course.) > > It is exactly that simple (ignoring implementation bugs.)
I think we are arguing about different things. My point (and which I think is Greg's point) is that we should start recommending shell script writers to stay away from the unquoted expansions of $* and $@. Yes, the POSIX rules might be "trivial", but the actual implementations are not, and shell script programmers care about running their scripts on real implementations. -- Eduardo Bustamante https://dualbus.me/
