On 2/5/15 8:06 AM, isabella parakiss wrote:
> On 2/4/15, konsolebox <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Logically that should only unset the elements of an array and not the
>> array variable
>> itself since '*' or '@' is more of a wildcard that represents the
>> indices. However, bash
>> does otherwise:
>>
>> #define ALL_ELEMENT_SUB(c) ((c) == '@' || (c) == '*')
>>
>> ...
>>
>> if (ALL_ELEMENT_SUB (sub[0]) && sub[1] == 0) // If substring is
>> just '@' or '*'
>> {
>> unbind_variable (var->name); // It just removes it.
>> return (0);
>> }
>>
>> Bash version is 4.3.33.
>>
>
> So, this is completely intended.
> May I ask what's the rationale behind this design choice?
It's a decision that's over twenty years old. It was probably one way
or the other: I didn't want to make it an error, like ksh93, so do you
want array[@] to refer to the array itself or `expand' to all the members.
I chose the former.
Chet
--
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, ITS, CWRU [email protected] http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/~chet/
