Re: syntax error near unexpected token `select'

[Paul Jarc]

Chet Ramey <chet@nike.ins.cwru.edu> wrote:
>> arg=( $(echo "$1"|cat) )

This works too, BTW, and does the same thing:
arg=( $1 )

> Straight array assignments like
>
> arg=(select)
>
> will fail because when the compound assignment is parsed, the parser will
> not return a `WORD' when `select' is parsed.

But *should* they fail?  This also fails:
  arg=(x select)
But this doesn't:
  echo select
Shouldn't the assignment cases have "select" parsed as it is in the
echo case?  Or else shouldn't the reserved word be treated as a plain
word in these cases?  The man page says: "The following words are
recognized as reserved when unquoted and either the first word of a
simple command (see SHELL GRAMMAR below) or the third word of a case
or for command".  These cases aren't either of those, so this is a
bug, right?


paul