* Andrew McRae <[email protected]> [2006-12-10 18:25]: > On 10 Dec 2006, at 09:49, Martin Ebourne wrote: > >(The linux crowd would have been much better off keeping bash > >for scripts and using zsh for interactive, yet another case of > >NIH syndrome.) > > Funny, I always thought zsh itself had the world's worst case > of NIH syndrome. The first quirk I ran into when trying out > zsh is the one that most shell scripters run into: > interpolation of variables whose values contain whitespace > doesn't work the way you expect. About which the zsh FAQ says: > > The classic difference is word splitting, discussed in > question 3.1; this catches out very many beginning zsh > users. As explained there, this is actually a bug in every > other shell. > > Now that's software with a truly hyperinflated sense of its own > importance!
Actually, judging by the number of shell newbies who forget (or just plain don't even know) to quote their variables and to tell when it's necessary, I would say that the zsh guys are completely correct: defaulting to word splitting is broken. Unfortunately, zsh being sane in this regard means it works differently from all the other insane shells, which is itself hateful. There's no way to win. Regards, -- Aristotle Pagaltzis // <http://plasmasturm.org/>
