#2098 PR merged: Use [*] instead of [@] for array expansion inside a string

Labels: cleanup, fixed / solved / done, minor bug

pcahyna opened issue at 2019-03-22 18:34:

Relax-and-Recover (ReaR) Pull Request Template

Please fill in the following items before submitting a new pull request:

Pull Request Details:

  • Type: Style Cleanup

  • Impact: Low

  • Reference to related issue (URL):
    https://github.com/rear/rear/pull/1887/files#r268264260

  • How was this pull request tested?
    Code analysis and experimenting with analogous snippets of bash code.

  • Brief description of the changes in this pull request:
    Array expansion inside strings like "aaa ${boot_list[@]} bbb" splits the string into several strings:

boot_list=( foo bar )
"aaa ${boot_list[@]} bbb"

-> "aaa foo" "bar bbb" instead of "aaa foo bar bbb". This is probably unintended, although harmless in this case.
Change [@] to a more intuitive [*], which keeps the result of expansion as one string.
See https://github.com/koalaman/shellcheck/wiki/SC2145

jsmeix commented at 2019-03-25 09:06:

@rmetrich
I assign this to you because you did https://github.com/rear/rear/pull/2096
and https://github.com/rear/rear/pull/2097 before
(and I know nothing about what syntax the bootlist command needs).

rmetrich commented at 2019-03-25 09:12:

There is indeed a diff, but not really seen when echoing:

$ boot_list=( foo bar )

$ for v in "aaa ${boot_list[@]} bbb"; do echo "$v"; done
aaa foo
bar bbb

$ for v in "aaa ${boot_list[*]} bbb"; do echo "$v"; done
aaa foo bar bbb

jsmeix commented at 2019-03-25 09:46:

@pcahyna
thank you for your precise inspection of the details is the code!

Because of this I added
https://github.com/rear/rear/issues/1068#issuecomment-476122565

[Export of Github issue for rear/rear.]