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From: dgk@ulysses.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards,btl.unix
Subject: Re: "$@ in shell"
Message-ID: <564@ulysses.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 22-Aug-83 09:39:46 EDT
Article-I.D.: ulysses.564
Posted: Mon Aug 22 09:39:46 1983
Date-Received: Mon, 22-Aug-83 20:34:17 EDT
References: <358@mhtsa.UUCP>, <556@ulysses.UUCP>
Organization: Bell Labs, Murray Hill
Lines: 25

I have received mail from a few who think that the Bourne shell is correct in
the expansion of "$@".  They rest their case on the line in the manual page
under Blank Interpretation, "Implicit null arguments ( those resulting from
parameter that have no values) are removed."
However, in the section on quoting it says that
"$@" is equivalent to "$1" "$2" ... .
If a shell script, script, consisting of the lines
	for i in "$@"
	do echo "$i"
	done
	for i in "$1" "$2" "$3"
	do echo "$i"
	done
is invoked as:
script 'line one' '' 'line three'
then the statement about quoting implies that the output should be:
line one

line three
line one

line three
The reason the rule on Blank Interpretation does not apply is the
$2 was an explicit null argument, not an implicit one.