Re: Inconsistent quote and escape handling in substitution part of parameter expansions.

[Chet Ramey]

On 2/28/12 4:28 PM, John Kearney wrote:
> 
> On 02/28/2012 10:05 PM, Chet Ramey wrote:
>> On 2/28/12 12:26 PM, John Kearney wrote:
>>
>>> But that isn't how it behaves.
>>> "${test//str/"dddd"}"
>>>
>>> because str is replaced with '"dddd"' as such it is treating the double
>>> quotes as string literals.
>>>
>>> however at the same time these literal double quotes escape/quote a
>>> single quote between them.
>>> As such they are treated both as literals and as quotes as such
>>> inconsistently.
>>
>> I don't have a lot of time today, but I'm going to try and answer bits
>> and pieces of this discussion.
>>
>> Yes, bash opens a new `quoting context' (for lack of a better term) inside
>> ${}.  Posix used to require it, though after lively discussion it turned
>> into "well, we said that but it's clearly not what we meant."
>>
>> There are a couple of places in the currently-published version of the
>> standard, minus any corregendia, that specify this.  The description of
>> ${parameter} reads, in part,
>>
>> "The matching closing brace shall be determined by counting brace levels,
>> skipping over enclosed quoted strings, and command substitutions."
>>
>> The section on double quotes reads, in part:
>>
>> "Within the string of characters from an enclosed "${" to the matching
>> '}', an even number of unescaped double-quotes or single-quotes, if any,
>> shall occur."
>>
>> Chet
> 
> yhea but I think the point is that the current behavior is useless.
> there is no case where I want a " to be printed and start a double
> quoted string? and thats the current behavior.
> 
> 
> Not so important how you treat it just need to pick 1. then you can at
> least work with it. Now you have to use a temp variable.
> 
> 
> as a side note ksh93 is pretty good, intuitive
> ksh93 -c 'test=teststrtest ; echo "${test//str/"dd dd"}"'
> testdd ddtest
> ksh93 -c '( test=teststrtest ; echo ${test//str/"dd '\''dd"} )'
> testdd 'ddtest

The real question is whether or not you do quote removal on the stuff
inside the braces when they're enclosed in double quotes.  Double
quotes usually inhibit quote removal.

The Posix "solution" to this is to require quote removal if a quote
character (backslash, single quote, double quote) is used to escape
or quote another character.  Somewhere I have the reference to the
Austin group discussion on this.

-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
                 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, ITS, CWRU    chet@case.edu    http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/~chet/