On Wednesday, November 22, 2006 12:50 PM Gaby wrote: > | > ! chunk=$arg
Why does this fail? What is the value of $chunk? > | > ... > | > ! chunk=`echo -n $arg` > | Is this one missing quotes or does it not matter? > Bill Page wrote: > | What shell actually requires such an awkward construction? > | Of if you wish why not write: > | > | chunk="$arg" > | > | or even better :-) > > the trouble with this is that is does not work -- I spent a > considerable amount of time on this quote micmac. :-( Does not work is too vague. Why does it fail? What is the result value of $chunk? > > | > | chunk=`echo -n "$arg"` > > this one is one needed. > That is not what you wrote originally in your patchlet. > | > | But I think "quotes" are only needed on argments to external > | commands like 'test', not on variable assignments or echo. > > Well, my shell (Zsh) is unhappy with the form chunk="$arg", when > chunk is used later with -R. > That's very odd. $chunk is just a variable. To use it with -R as a parameter to notangle I would recommend the following quotes: notangle "-R$chunk" because notangle is an external command. All of these forms behave identically in my tests using bash provided that all parameters to external commands are properly quoted. Perhaps "3.1: Why does `$var' where `var="foo bar"' not do what I expect?" in http://www.faqs.org/faqs/unix-faq/shell/zsh might help? I fear you are heading for "quote hell" if you do not have the exact semantics of the shell for which you are designing the scripts. Regards, Bill Page. _______________________________________________ Axiom-developer mailing list [email protected] http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/axiom-developer
