From: David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2008 12:23:44 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH] cmd_reset: don't trash uncommitted changes unless told to
Message-ID: <86k5gcs7u7.fsf@lola.quinscape.zz>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.1.00.0806261308420.9925@racer>

Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> writes:

> Hi,
>
> On Thu, 26 Jun 2008, Matthieu Moy wrote:
>
>> Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu> writes:
>> 
>> > for i in $*
>> 
>> Detail: you meant "$@", your version isn't whitespace-robust.
>
> In that case, you'd have to quote the variables in "$prefix$i" and "> $i", 
> too.

Yes for the first, no for the second I think.  But it would do no harm
in the second case, either.  Certainly makes it less shell-dependent.

In fact, just tried it with bash and dash:

dak@lisa:/tmp$ zup="a b  c"
dak@lisa:/tmp$ echo x > $zup
bash: $zup: ambiguous redirect
dak@lisa:/tmp$ echo x > "$zup"
dak@lisa:/tmp$ rm "$zup"
dak@lisa:/tmp$ dash
$ zup="a b  c"
$ echo x > $zup
$ ls -l "$zup"
-rw-r--r-- 1 dak dak 2 2008-06-26 14:18 a b  c
$ 

Dash gets it right.  Bash just talks nonsense.  "ambiguous redirect" is
not a useful message at all.  There is nothing ambiguous here.

Anyway, bash is prevalent enough to warrant the quoting.

-- 
David Kastrup