From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Date: Wed,  9 Aug 2006 13:03:53 +0200
From: Martin Neubauer <m.ne@gmx.net>
To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@cse.psu.edu>
Subject: Re: [9fans] Environment variable
Message-ID: <20060809110352.GA5077@shodan.homeunix.net>
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Hello,

I don't think that this really is weird. My understanding is that
the terminating '\0' is not treated as part of the content of a
string but merely of its representation in memory. So if you output
a null string, you don't actually output anything (and therefore
assign nothing to $b). That then explains why xd fails to open $a
(which is an actual string, albeit with length zero) and waits for
standard input because $b isn't expanded to anything.

I hope my attempt at an explanation wasn't utter nonsense and helped
clarifying a bit.

Regards,
   Martin