Yikes! I'm sorry I asked. Thanks tho, but that's scary stuff.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_complexity#Table_of_common_time_complexities
Seems to me that at a first estimation one might want: 1) Full exact copy -- byte identical including blanks, newlines, trailing stuff and naughty chars. slurp.Reading an entire file into a variable is often -- not always, but often -- a red flag that suggests the entire script is poorly designed. It uses more memory and makes it difficult to feed the data to external utilties (although the latter is less of a concern with zsh in particular, which relies on external utilities less than other shells do).
I appreciate the historical context. Much is understandable
when you know
the history.
Elision of empty values is a property of unquoted expansion. It has NOTHING to do with variable types.
I'll take another look, thanks. I may have gotten my wires crossed.