Re: Change in FIGNORE behavior

[Bart Schaefer <schaefer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Jun 4, 10:49am, Peter Stephenson wrote:
} Subject: Re: Change in FIGNORE behavior
}
} > +On failure the empty string is returned for a single match; any
} > +time a valid subscript is needed (for example, on an assignment
} > +to a failed element, or in a subscript range) the subscript is
} > +treated as the location of the first element.
} 
} Any strong reaction to this further change for (R)? I'm tempted to put
} it in in the hope it's the best of a bad job.

I confess I have not yet had a chance to really even think about it.

I seem to recall a previous conversation on this subject in which the
former behavior (prior to 23440) was as it was so that both (R) and
${array[$array[(I)pattern]}} would return the same result.

} I think the ideal case would be that a failed (R) returned an index off the
} beginning of the array.

That would be ideal for (I) as well, and in the absence of KSH_ARRAYS it
would sort of be possible.  Maybe what we need is (sigh) yet another flag
that controls the behavior of index zero.

Given such a flag (and possibly even without it), we could make it an
error to assign to array[0] (treat it as an invalid identifier) when the
KSH_ARRAYS option is not in effect.  When KSH_ARRAYS *is* in effect, you
already have to jump through hoops to figure out what it means for (I)
to return zero, so one is really no worse off in that case.