Affects xenial too. There is definitely something wrong. Several notes on this:
1. A direct call to "echo ${f[@]:0:1}" outputs "a". The problems thus lies in the variable assignment. 2. If first_char=${f[@]:0:1}, then echo "$first_char" outputs \001 but "declare -p first_char" outputs \001\001 3. Double-quoted first_char="${f[@]:0:1}" puts "a" in first_char like in Precise 4. first_char=${f[*]:0:1} has the same behaviour 5. Anyway, proper syntax should be first_char=${f:0:1} since you consider f as a string. If you want to force bash to consider f as an array (with the ${f[@]} syntax), then first_char=${f[@]:0:1} should put f[0] in first_char, that is "abcd", not "a". So IMHO both Precise and Trusty results are wrong. ** Tags added: xenial -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1381567 Title: Bash returns unexpected character \001 on string operation To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/bash/+bug/1381567/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs