From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from euclid.skiles.gatech.edu (list@euclid.skiles.gatech.edu [130.207.146.50]) by melb.werple.net.au (8.7.5/8.7.3/2) with ESMTP id DAA06786 for ; Tue, 25 Jun 1996 03:51:21 +1000 (EST) Received: (from list@localhost) by euclid.skiles.gatech.edu (8.7.3/8.7.3) id NAA06769; Mon, 24 Jun 1996 13:38:31 -0400 (EDT) Resent-Date: Mon, 24 Jun 1996 13:38:31 -0400 (EDT) From: Zoltan Hidvegi Message-Id: <199606241738.TAA05331@bolyai.cs.elte.hu> Subject: Re: read broken in beta21 To: A.Main@dcs.warwick.ac.uk (Zefram) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 1996 19:38:10 +0200 (MET DST) Cc: A.Main@dcs.warwick.ac.uk, zsh-workers@math.gatech.edu In-Reply-To: <8282.199606241720@stone.dcs.warwick.ac.uk> from Zefram at "Jun 24, 96 06:20:36 pm" Organization: Dept. of Comp. Sci., Eotvos University, Budapest, Hungary Phone: (36 1)2669833 ext: 2667, home phone: (36 1) 2752368 X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL16 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Resent-Message-ID: <"D8gx03.0.hf1.MAjpn"@euclid> Resent-From: zsh-workers@math.gatech.edu X-Mailing-List: archive/latest/1433 X-Loop: zsh-workers@math.gatech.edu Precedence: list Resent-Sender: zsh-workers-request@math.gatech.edu > >What is sh? > > I was referring to the Bourne shell. > > > The line shall be split into fields (see the definition in 3.1.3) as in > > the shell (see 3.6.5); the first field shall be assigned to the first > > variable var, the second field to the second variable var, etc. If there > > are fewer var operands specified than there are fields, the leftover > > fields and their intervening separators shall be assigned to the last > ^^^^^^^^^^^ > > var. If there are fewer fields than vars, the remaining vars shall be set > > to empty strings. > > It sounds to me like trailing IFS characters are not *intervening* > separators, and should therefore be removed. non-whitespace IFS characters (NWICs) always separate fields. A trailing NWIC separate a trailing empty field from the other fields. E.g. % IFS=/ ; set -- $IFS ; echo $# 2 So the trailing NWICs are intervening separators between empty fields. Zoltan