Re: devel: Questions about quoting in the new replacement ${var/pat/&}

[Chet Ramey]

On 1/18/22 8:50 PM, Koichi Murase wrote:
> Thank you for your consideration and for implementing it.  I have
> tried the latest devel branch and played with it.  I now really like
> its behavior.  Thank you very much for taking it into consideration.

It's this kind of back and forth I find valuable.

> > It probably won't be in bash-5.2-alpha, since I already froze and tested
> > that, but the behavior will be different in the next devel branch push
> > after that.
>
> Does that mean it will be in bash-5.2-beta or in bash-5.3?  I am
> interested in what would be the behavior of the release version of
> bash-5.2, which would affect how I will modify my script.

It will be in bash-5.2-beta.

> > I still like the simpler explanation: if bash-5.1 expanded `string' to
> > something that contained an unescaped `&', replace it. If it expanded to
> > something that contained a literal '\&' you'll get a `&'. Backslash-escaped
> > backslashes produce a single literal backslash. But allowing double quotes
> > to inhibit the replacement is probably better for backwards compatibility,
> > even with patsub_replacement off by default.
>
> Is this an explanation that will be put in ChangeLog or in Bash
> Reference Manual? 

No, because that explanation does not match the current behavior. It
matched the original behavior.

There is fairly extensive documentation in the current version of the
texinfo manual. Take a look; tell me what you think.

Chet

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