Re: splitting/whitespace in expansions of ${*} vs ${*/}

[Grisha Levit]

Sorry if you already noticed this: The latest devel push fixes the reported
field-splitting case but there is a regression with the fields getting
re-joined with spaces when performing an assignment:

   $ set -- 1 2; IFS=; a=$* b=${*/}; printf '<%s>' "$a" "$b"
   <12><1 2>

and with the expansion producing fields in the PE assignment case:

   $ set -- 1 2; IFS=; unset a b; printf '<%s>' ${a=$*} ${b=${*/}}
   <12><1><2>

Also, upon closer inspection, I suspect the unset IFS case in my report is
actually an issue with the a=$* case and that b=${*/} behaves correctly
(aside from not matching the a=$* behavior).  The whitespace-trimming-when-
not-field-splitting thing is something that changed in bash-4.3:

   bash-4.2$ unset IFS; set ' '; a=$*; printf '<%s>' "$a"
   < >
   bash-4.3$ unset IFS; set ' '; a=$*; printf '<%s>' "$a"
   <>

Also also, the field-splitting issue is also present for arrays subscripted
with * when undergoing case modification or pattern substitution:

   $ A=(1 2); IFS=; printf '<%s>' ${A[*]} ${A[*]/}
   <1><2><12>