Field splitting bug affecting OpenBSD sh and its derivatives

Hi Brian,

I trust that you are well.

In August of 2024, I discovered a bug concerning field splitting that affects OpenBSD sh(1) and its derivatives, though I neglected to report it at the time. To wit:

$ sh -c 'IFS=:; path=:; set -- $path; printf {%s} "$#" "$@"; echo'
{0}

This outcome does not conform to the Shell Command Language specification. Other implementations that I have tried produce the expected results. For instance:

$ dash -c 'IFS=:; path=:; set -- $path; printf {%s} "$#" "$@"; echo'
{1}{}

See also:

https://gitweb.gentoo.org/proj/gentoo-functions.git/commit/?id=116645c35885

Copying in bugs@ in case this is best handled on-list. Please note that I am not subscribed.

Regards,

--
Kerin Millar