Hello! I think this is a valid challenge: 1. One can do the following to strip whitespace from string $str: str=${${str##[[:space:]]##}%%[[:space:]]##} This uses ## operator and thus requires setopt extendedglob. 2. Extendedglob-free code that does the same: str="${str#"${str%%[! $'\t']*}"}" # leading whitespace str="${str%"${str##*[! $'\t']}"}" # trailing whitespace It's tricky, but the main thing one has to notice to grasp this: The inner ${str%%...} substitution will match from end to beginning of string till last non-whitespace. So it will left only leading whitespace. Which is then removed from start of the string with #-subst. 3. I have an array `pairs', holding elements like this: pairs=( "a -> b" " c ->d " ), etc. I want to obtain array with additional split on "->" (so it is nicely fitting into a hash, key-a val-b, etc.). Following is an extendedglob-dependant code that performs the split and also trims leading and trailing whitespace from all elements: pairs=( "${(@)${(@)${(@s:->:)pairs}##[[:space:]]##}%%[[:space:]]##}" ) 4. Is there a extendedglob-free (not depending on it) version of the above point 3.? -- Sebastian Gniazdowski News: https://twitter.com/ZdharmaI IRC: https://kiwiirc.com/client/chat.freenode.net:+6697/#zplugin Blog: http://zdharma.org