Re: field splitting behavior

[Zefram <zefram@xxxxxxxx>]

Paul Lew wrote:
>> var='foobar'
>> echo ${(@)${(s/:/)var}[1]}
>f
>
>So why it did field splitting on each character when there is no
>separator ':' found?  I would expect 'foobar' on the output.

The result of the splitting is a single word "foobar", as you expect.
This is then treated as a scalar, not an array, and so the [1] extracts
the first character, instead of the first element.  The (@) doesn't do
what you think it does (it only has an effect where double quotes are
used).  I don't see any easy way to force the result of a ${(s...)...}
to be treated as an array, so I'll have to leave that to the expansion
wizards.

-zefram