Re: Problem with positional output

 set -f is the short form for setting the noglob option.

---In [email protected], <stephane.chazelas@...> wrote :

 2016-11-14 12:28:10 -0800, Jim Hill:
 > I think Stephane's method is best, though I don't see the need for the
 > noglob here, I think
 > 
 > (IFS=\|; set -- $RETVAL; printf %s\\n "$3")
 
 No, the set -o noglob is needed here.
 
 Using a variable unquoted in Bourne-like shells except zsh is
 the split+glob operator.
 
 Try with:
 
 RETVAL='*|?|[a-z]'
 
 For instance.
 
 See also
 
 https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/171346/security-implications-of-forgetting-to-quote-a-variable-in-bash-posix-shells https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/171346/security-implications-of-forgetting-to-quote-a-variable-in-bash-posix-shells
 
 More generally, when leaving a variable or other expansion
 unquoted, you need to consider $IFS and the status of the noglob
 option.
 
 > As an alternative if your data doesn't contain newlines, awk is
 > specialized for this,
 > 
 > awk -F\| '{print $3}' <<<"$RETVAL"
 > 
 > will do the same job.
 
 Again, that retrieves the 3rd field of every line of $RETVAL, not
 the 3rd field in $RETVAL.
 
 If you're going to use that zsh <<< operator (though it's now
 also supported by recent versions of ksh93 and bash), you could
 as well use ${"${(@s:|:)REVAL}"[3]}.
 
 s:|: splits on |
 @ preserves empty elements within quotes
 
 -- 
 Stephane



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]