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From: Zefram <A.Main@dcs.warwick.ac.uk>
Message-Id: <7151.199606220008@stone.dcs.warwick.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: IFS contains Meta - why?
To: jdl@clinicom.com (J.D. Laub)
Date: Sat, 22 Jun 1996 01:08:50 +0100 (BST)
Cc: zsh-workers@math.gatech.edu
In-Reply-To: <199606211947.NAA182748@clinicom.com> from "J.D. Laub" at Jun 21, 96 01:47:56 pm
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>>     ifs         = ztrdup(" \t\n  ");
>>     ifs[3]      = Meta;
>
>1) Why does a space (0x20) appear both at the start and end of IFS?
>2) Why is Meta in there (contrary to the man page)?

The combination {Meta, ' '} is used to represent NUL.  IFS now, by
default, consists of space, tab, newline and NUL.

>                                                     The sort command
>    under HPUX 10.01 stops processing when it runs across non-ascii
>    characters, so I see nothing after IFS when I run "set | sort".

It can't handle the NUL, which is hardly surprising really.

-zefram