<<IFS=: foo=a:b:; cmd $foo>> documented

[Stephane Chazelas]

Hi,

That piece of code:

IFS=:
set -f
foo=a:b:
printf '<%s>\n' $foo

gives different results depending on the shell.

With pdksh, zsh, it gives:

<a>
<b>
<>

With bash, ksh, dash:

<a>
<b>

Also with the Bourne shell, but so does "a::b".

One would expect zsh's behavior if IFS is supposed to be a field
_separator_. On the other end, with zsh's behavior, there's no
way to distinguish between an empty list and a list with one
empty element.

But, with bash behavior, you can't loop through $PATH
components, as in $PATH, "/bin:" means ("/bin", ""), i.e. "/bin"
and the current directory.

The problem is I can't see that behavior documented clearly in 
info -f bash -n 'Word Splitting'

regards,
Stephane