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Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2001 19:21:34 +0000
To: zsh-users@sunsite.auc.dk
Subject: Re: field splitting behavior
Message-ID: <20011127192134.I8299@fysh.org>
References: <15363.58319.278466.686768@paullew-ultra.cisco.com>
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From: Zefram <zefram@fysh.org>

Paul Lew wrote:
>> var='foobar'
>> echo ${(@)${(s/:/)var}[1]}
>f
>
>So why it did field splitting on each character when there is no
>separator ':' found?  I would expect 'foobar' on the output.

The result of the splitting is a single word "foobar", as you expect.
This is then treated as a scalar, not an array, and so the [1] extracts
the first character, instead of the first element.  The (@) doesn't do
what you think it does (it only has an effect where double quotes are
used).  I don't see any easy way to force the result of a ${(s...)...}
to be treated as an array, so I'll have to leave that to the expansion
wizards.

-zefram