Re: Defect in manual section "Conditional Constructs" / case

[Andreas Schwab]

On Aug 24 2021, Dietmar_Schindler@web.de wrote:

> In the section
> https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bash.html#Conditional-Constructs
> in the description of the "case" command there is no mention (as far as I
> can see, it doesn't follow from the documented expansions etc.) that a
> _pattern_ undergoes quote removal, but it does [see e. g. case aa in a""a)
> echo match;; esac]. (One might think it does self-evidently in the process
> of "Shell Expansions" performed on the command line, but this expansion
> series is not performed on the case command's _word_ and patterns - they for
> example don't undergo brace expansion -; for _word_, it is explicitly said:
> "The _word_ undergoes tilde expansion, parameter expansion, command
> substitution, arithmetic expansion, and quote removal …"; for _pattern_:
> "Each _pattern_ undergoes tilde expansion, parameter expansion, command
> substitution, and arithmetic expansion." - quote removal is missing.)

That's because quote removal is _not_ performed.  The quotes are
significant for pattern matching, which needs to respect quoting.

Andreas.

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Andreas Schwab, schwab@linux-m68k.org
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