Re: treatment of empty strings - why is this not a bug?

[Peter Stephenson <p.w.stephenson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 17 Jan 2009 00:31:05 -0500
Greg Klanderman <gak@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>>>> Bart Schaefer <schaefer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> 
> > Consider an array populated by using a glob pattern, which is then
> > subjected to replacement using $arr:s/pat// or $arr:h or $arr:t.
> > You don't know at time of execution what will be matched in by the
> > glob, nor necessarily what will be left behind after substitution.
> > If the substitution results in an emtpy string, how often do you
> > want that to remain in the argument list of whatever action you next
> > apply to the contents of the array?
> 
> I do not agree with this reasoning, but I don't think it's worth
> continuing to argue about it.

It's not just reasoning, it's actually used all over the place for
eliminating unwanted matches.

It's probably worth getting one think crystal clear: there is absolutely
no likelihood of changing basic syntactic defaults, which is a recipe
for disaster.  So you're right, there's not a lot point arguing.

-- 
Peter Stephenson <p.w.stephenson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Web page now at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/p.w.stephenson/