Re: [PATCH] shell portability: Use sed instead of non-portable variable expansion

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Sep 5, 2011, 07:45 UTC
Message-ID: <7v39gbxwi6.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <4E647BD5.8060609@viscovery.net>

Johannes Sixt <j.sixt@viscovery.net> writes:

Show 5 quoted lines

> Actually, it's the opposite: Within double-quotes, a backslash is only
> removed when the next character has a special meaning (essentially $, `,
> ", \), otherwise, it remains and loses its quoting ability. This means,
> that the backslash would remain as a literal character in our patterns on
> the right of % or #, and they would not work anymore as intended.

That's strange...

I thought that VAR=<any string without $IFS character in it> would behave identically to VAR="<the same string as above>". You seem to be saying that they should act differently.

>> If that is the case, either the above or my [?] would work it around, I
>> would think.
>
> [?] instead of \? is certainly also worth a try.

I obviously agree. Besides, [?] would sidestep the tricky backslash vs double quote issue entirely, so it would be a more robust solution to leave it around than "sometimes you need to avoid double-quote and some other times you would need double-quote" for other people to mimic writing tests later.