Re: IFS field splitting doesn't conform with POSIX

[Kerin Millar]

On Sun, 02 Apr 2023 09:32:20 +0700
Robert Elz <kre@munnari.OZ.AU> wrote:

>     Date:        Sat, 1 Apr 2023 19:44:10 -0400
>     From:        Saint Michael <venefax@gmail.com>
>     Message-ID:  
> <CAC9cSOAA0g97fzuLuRXmee6EmRdUm7zPzk+U20YMvWbJyMVdng@mail.gmail.com>
> 
>   | The compelling reason is: I may not know how many values are stored in the
>   | comma-separated list.
> 
> Others have told you you're wrong, but this is not any kind of compelling
> reason - you simply give one more variable name than you expected to need
> (than you would have used otherwise) and then all the extra fields that
> you wanted the shell to ignore will be assigned to it - which you are free
> to ignore if you like, or you can test to see if anything is there, and
> issue an error message (or something) if more fields were given than you
> were expecting.   Much better behaviour than the shell simply ignoring
> data (silently).

I would add to this that bash affords one the luxury of using read -a before 
proceeding to check the size of the resulting array.

-- 
Kerin Millar