Re: read Built-in Parameter Behavior -- Null Byte Delimiter

[Chet Ramey]

On 1/18/16 11:25 AM, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 11:16:06AM -0500, Chet Ramey wrote:
>> On 1/18/16 8:14 AM, Greg Wooledge wrote:
>>> I suspect the interpretation of -d '' to mean a NUL byte delimiter
>>> may have been an accident originally (but that's a guess).
>>
>> I guess that depends on what you mean by `accident'.
> 
> Happy coincidence, then.

Sure.

> 
>> It's not a special case that needs to be documented as such.  It's a
>> straightforward application of the rules for assigning the delimiter
>> and reading it.  You do have to understand how C strings work and how
>> they are used when passing arguments to commands for it to make sense.
> 
> Other shells must go out of their way to suppress it, then.

Most of the other shells remove NUL bytes from `read's input.  They
probably do this before checking the delimiter.

-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
                 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, ITS, CWRU    chet@case.edu    http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/~chet/