Re: $@ and set -u

[Stephane Chazelas <stephane_chazelas@xxxxxxxx>]

2009-04-30 11:06:16 -0400, Chet Ramey:
[...]
> I also tested a fairly extensive list of open source shells, and dash
> was the only one claiming Posix compliance that doesn't make it a fatal
> error.  (zsh doesn't raise an error, but I wasn't running it in sh or ksh
> mode.)
[...]

zsh in sh mode behaves like dash:

$ ARGV0=sh zsh -uc ': $*; echo ok'
ok
$ ARGV0=sh zsh -uc ': $1; echo ok'
zsh:1: 1: parameter not set

(the ARGV0 thing is zsh's way to specify the argv[0] of a
command being executed)

I agree that behavior makes more sense. I don't expect anyone to
rely on the shell being exited when expanding $@/$* while $# ==
0 and -u is set, so changing the behavior is probably safe
enough.

ksh and bash might also want to consider how to treat other
arrays (though that's out of POSIX scope).

BTW,

$ ksh -uc 'set -A a; echo ${a[@]}; echo ok'
ksh: line 1: a[(null)]: parameter not set

That sounds like a bug (that null thing).

Cheers,
Stephane