fyi, attached a small script which facilitates the inter-shell comparison (might be augmented for further contexts in which $* and $@ get expanded, if necessary). the result looks like
+++++++++++++++++ $1=a, $2=b, IFS=, +++++++++++++++++ command ksh mksh bash zsh echo $* a b a b a b a b echo "$*" a,b a,b a,b a,b echo $@ a b a b a b a b echo "$@" a b a b a b a b x=$*; echo "$x" a,b a,b a,b a,b x="$*"; echo "$x" a,b a,b a,b a,b x=$@; echo "$x" a b a b a b a,b x="$@"; echo "$x" a b a b a b a,b x=$*; echo $x a b a b a b a,b x="$*"; echo $x a b a b a b a,b x=$@; echo $x a b a b a b a,b x="$@"; echo $x a b a b a b a,b cat <<< $* a,b a,b a,b a,b cat <<< "$*" a,b a,b a,b a,b cat <<< $@ a b a,b a b a,b cat <<< "$@" a b a,b a b a,b what it shows is, that bash manages to mimic ksh behaviour completely here. mksh differs only in the handling of the here strings from ksh/bash and only for $@. zsh does here strings like mksh and something different from all other shells when printing unquoted variable assignment. since all these differences seem to concern details of interpreting the standard and/or decisions whether to follow ksh or not, I think you are in a better position (as the author of one of the shells) to contact the other shells' maintainers than me. but if you think it makes sense, I also could do that. overall, I still neither do understand the differences between the shells nor the differences between the different variants of accessing/using $* and $@ completely... but from a pragmatic point of view: if mksh would modify its here string handling somewhat, ksh, mksh, bash would behave identical. and identical behaviour of different shells I like ;). ** Attachment added: "compat" https://bugs.launchpad.net/mksh/+bug/1857195/+attachment/5315544/+files/compat -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of mksh Mailing List, which is subscribed to mksh. Matching subscriptions: mkshlist-to-mksh-bugmail https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1857195 Title: here string behaviour different in mksh and ksh93 Status in mksh: New Bug description: consider IFS=$'\n' x=(a "b c") cat <<< ${x[*]} cat <<< "${x[*]}" cat <<< ${x[@]} cat <<< "${x[@]}" executing this in mksh (or zsh, incidentally) yields the output a b c a b c a b c a b c (i.e. identical output, always inserting first IFS char between elements, for all variants of accessing all elements of the array) while ksh93 (or bash, for that matter) yields a b c a b c a b c a b c (i.e. `*' behaves different from `@' but double quoting is ineffectual). I am not sure whether this is a bug (either in ksh93 or mksh) but wanted to report this inconsistency and to ask for clarification. what I _would_ have expected to start with is, that the above "here string" commands would yield the same output as print ${x[*]} print "${x[*]}" print ${x[@]} print "${x[@]}" which is neither true for ksh93 nor for mksh. is this all good and well and I am only overlooking something obvious? To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/mksh/+bug/1857195/+subscriptions
