Re: Fwd: more splitting travails

[Bart Schaefer <schaefer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Jan 12, 2024 at 12:32 PM Ray Andrews <rayandrews@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>     % vvar=("${(@f)"$(<testfile2)"}")
>
> ... and that's not as Byzantine as it looks: " (@f) : read: "include blank lines, and split on newlines (including empty lines) "   ... Yes?

Close.  It's the inner double quotes around $(<...) that preserve the
exact contents of the file.**  (f) means split on newlines and (@)
means "this is an array, don't join it into a string".  Then the
outermost set of double quotes means "include empty array elements"
(which, because of (f), is empty lines in this case).

** Except that $(...) trims off TRAILING newlines, so if the last
line(s) of the file are blank they'll vanish.