Irregularities when using -v, -z, -n

[eduardo-chibas]

> Sent: Friday, July 30, 2021 at 2:30 AM
> From: "Leonid Isaev (ifax)" <leonid.isaev@ifax.com>
> To: help-bash@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: Irregularities when using -v, -z, -n
>
> On Thu, Jul 29, 2021 at 09:42:51AM -0400, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > Inflating the bash(1) man page even further with thousands of examples
> > is not likely to be accepted.
>
> Fair point.
>
> I had online documentation at gnu.org in mind, actually. But yes, I see how
> this can be a problem if it is generated from the same source as the manpage.
>
> > Unraveling things a bit, most of the OP's troubles would go away if
> > they would simply initialize their variables with default values up
> > front, instead of trying to determine retroactively whether they
> > already assigned a value to the variable during option processing.
>
> Agreed. The only check to be made in practice, is whether a (already defined)
> variable contains a zero-length string or not...

I am starting to see that.  It is not immediately obvious because of the 
multitude
of functionalities to test if variable is set or unset.  Real progress can be 
made
if you start deprecating calls that are most likely to do more harm than good.
Would be better for everybody.


> --
> Leonid Isaev
>
>