Re: Incorrect alias expansion within command substitution

[Chet Ramey]

On 1/31/22 11:40 PM, Martijn Dekker wrote:
> On the latest code from the devel branch:
> GNU bash, versie 5.2.0(35)-alpha (x86_64-apple-darwin18.7.0)
>
> Reproducer script:
>
> shopt -s expand_aliases
> alias let='let --'
> set -x
> let '1 == 1'
> : $(let '1 == 1')
>
> Output:
>
> + let -- '1 == 1'
> ++ let -- -- '1 == 1'
> foo: line 5: let: --: syntax error: operand expected (error token is "-")
> + :
>
> The alias is incorrectly expanded in the command substitution, duplicating 
> the '--' argument and causing a syntax error.

Thanks for the report. This is a consequence of parsing the contents of the
command substitution `early', at parse time, then doing it again at
execution time. It's clearly wrong to expand aliases during both passes.

But which is the `right' time? If you expand on the first pass, you get
constructs like this failing to find command `a':

[ -n "$BASH_VERSION" ] && shopt -s expand_aliases

foo()
{
        var=$(a b)
        echo $var
}

alias a=echo
foo

If you defer alias expansion until execution, you lose the (posix-
encouraged but officially unspecified according to the approved
interpretation of issue 1342) ability to have aliases affect command
parsing in the command substitution:

[ -n "$BASH_VERSION" ] && shopt -s expand_aliases

alias nest='('

echo $( nest echo ok 1 ) )
echo "$( nest echo ok 2 ) )"

Can't have both.

Historically, bash (and ksh93) has favored the former. Just about all the
other shells claiming some sort of POSIX conformance favor the latter (all
the ash-based shells, yash, mksh).

What are your plans here?

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/