Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!mcvax!hp4nl!philmds!leo
From: leo@philmds.UUCP (Leo de Wit)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Is this known to unix.wizards?
Message-ID: <912@philmds.UUCP>
Date: 6 Jan 89 05:54:51 GMT
References: <13307@ncoast.UUCP>
Reply-To: leo@philmds.UUCP (Leo de Wit)
Organization: Philips I&E DTS Eindhoven
Lines: 24

In article <13307@ncoast.UUCP> allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon S. Allbery) writes:
|Every so often there is mention of /bin/sh's braindamaged handling of "$@"
|when there are no arguments.  I think I've worked out a way around it that
|doesn't require "if" or "case":
|
|				${1+"$@"}
|
|The above construct should NOT be quoted.  And I'm pretty sure it will work
|on all versions of the Bourne shell.  It seems to work in some tests I've
|done here.  Anyone else want to comment?  I find it hard to believe that I'm
|the first one to notice this, but I've never seen any discussion of it
|anywhere and it *certainly* isn't in the manual or in any of the shell books
|I've read.

In article <15232@mimsy.UUCP> chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek) writes:
   [Subject: Re: make bug]
|echo ${1+"$@"} | sed -e "s/ /$suf /g" -e "s/$/$suf/"
   and
|echo ${1+"$@"} | sed -e "s/$oldsuf /$newsuf /g" -e "s/$oldsuf$/$newsuf/"

so at least Chris knew of the construct (or hacked up his scripts
quickly after seeing Brandon's message 8-).

                                              Leo.