Looking for clarity of the word/term "string" as used in a couple of places in man pages

Looking for clarity of the word/term "string" as used in a couple of places in man pages

[Jim]

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Hi everyone,

I hope I am not reading more into this than was the original intent.

The CONDITIONAL EXPRESSIONS '-n string' and '-z string' both allow 'string'
to be
either a literal string(quoted or not) or a parameter.

Parameter Expansion Flags 'r' and 'l' for 'string1' and 'string2' appear
only to allow literal
strings. And, quotes are considered part of said string.  The only special
character that
I found that works, so far, is a backslash(\).

Is this an inconsistent use of the term string, or am I missing something?

I was hoping to use a parameter as 'string?' to generate padding, but ended
up using a
loop instead.

Is there any reason why a parameter wouldn't work other than the code not
supporting it?

Thanks,

Jim Murphy

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Re: Looking for clarity of the word/term "string" as used in a couple of places in man pages

[Lawrence Velázquez]

On Sat, Jun 25, 2022, at 9:14 PM, Jim wrote:
> The CONDITIONAL EXPRESSIONS '-n string' and '-z string' both allow 
> 'string' to be
> either a literal string(quoted or not) or a parameter.
>
> Parameter Expansion Flags 'r' and 'l' for 'string1' and 'string2' 
> appear only to allow literal
> strings. And, quotes are considered part of said string.  The only 
> special character that
> I found that works, so far, is a backslash(\).
>
> Is this an inconsistent use of the term string, or am I missing something?

What you're missing is that conditional expressions' "file", "string",
and "pattern" arguments are documented to undergo shell expansions,
while the arguments of most parameter expansion flags are not.

"String" is not a rigorously defined term, so it's not all that
useful to get hung up on what it "means".

-- 
vq