5.3-alpha: less readable output when set -x

[balducci]

hello

Apologies if I am missing some blatant point here

I have noticed a difference in behavior of bash-5.2.26 and
bash-5.3-alpha which isn't a problem of correctness, but may be wasn't
intentional(?)

Given the scriptlett:

----8<----
#!/bin/sh
set -x

show () {
    cat <<EOF
$1
EOF
    return 0
}

show "
1
2
3
"
exit 0
----8<----

for me the output is different for the 2 versions:

    bash-5.2.26 :                bash-5.3-alpha :                 
    ----8<----                   ----8<----                     
    ##> ./scriptlett.sh          ##> ./scriptlett.sh       
    + show '                     + show $'\n1\n2\n3\n'          
    1                            + cat                          
    2                                                           
    3                            1                              
    '                            2                              
    + cat                        3                              
                                                                
    1                            + return 0                     
    2                            + exit 0                       
    3                            ---->8----                     

    + return 0
    + exit 0
    ---->8----

Note the difference in how the argument to the function is
output.  In the case of bash-5.3-alpha the syntax of the argument is
correct (ie if I call the show function with $'\n1\n2\n3\n' everything
works as expected), but is less readable (and this is more so if the
argument is a long stretch of lines)

For what I seem to understand, this might be related to:

  ----8<----
  b. Bash does a better job of preserving user-supplied quotes around a word
     completion, instead of requoting it.
  ---->8----
?

Of course, if the "new" behavior is intentional, I guess there will be
good reasons for it and apologize for the noise

Just noticed and thought it was good to report upstream

thanks a lot for your valuable work

ciao
-gabriele