Re: Z-Shell Frequently-Asked Questions (monthly posting)

[hzoli@cs.elte.hu (Zoltan Hidvegi)]

P.Stephenson@swansea.ac.uk wrote:
> hzoli@cs.elte.hu wrote:
> > > B1) Differences from sh and ksh
> > > ...
> > >   Command line substitutions, globbing etc.:
> > 
> > Just one addition here: foo=* assignment assigns the list of files in the
> > current directory as an array to foo if there are at least two matches, or if
> > there is a single file in the directory, foo becames a scalar whose value is
> > the name of that file. Other Bourne shells does not glob the right hand side
> > of assignments. In my releases the default behaviour is to not glob here, but
> > this can be changed by setting the GLOB_ASSIGN option.
> 
> I agree this is a little inconsistent.  What about `foo=(*)', though?
> I use that kind of thing a lot, and it seems obvious to me that it
> should always do globbing --- at least, I tend to think of arguments
> of an array assignment behaving like command line arguments as far as
> word splitting is concerned.  Perhaps it's not obvious to others.  (I
> can do `set -A' but I like assignments to look like assignments.)

Of course I agree, that foo=(*) should do globbing. That's the right way to do
it. I did not change that in my release, moreover I recommend its usage in the
manual.

Zoltan