Shift arguments

Shift arguments

[Peter Stephenson]

On Wed, 31 Oct 2012 14:25:46 +0000
Peter Stephenson <p.stephenson@samsung.com> wrote:
> It looks like this is hitting some pathology in memory management to
> do with the argument array (which is being shifted at that line).

Looking at the code, I found a feature of shift I'm not sure I like:

% integer foo=3
% set -- one two three four five six
% shift foo
% print $*
four five six

In other words, if the argument to shift is a parameter that isn't an
array, it's used to give a mathematical value with which to shift the
positional parameters.  That seems confusing.

pws

Re: Shift arguments

[Bart Schaefer]

On Oct 31,  3:01pm, Peter Stephenson wrote:
}
} % integer foo=3
} % set -- one two three four five six
} % shift foo
} % print $*
} four five six
} 
} In other words, if the argument to shift is a parameter that isn't an
} array, it's used to give a mathematical value with which to shift the
} positional parameters.  That seems confusing.

I can't disagree that it's confusing, but the idea is that you can give
any math expression there, e.g. "shift 7-foo" would shift by 4.  This
is in the same category as passing math expressions to "return".

It's always been like that ...