Re: [PATCH] shell portability: Use sed instead of non-portable variable expansion

Johannes Sixt [off-list ref] writes:

Actually, it's the opposite: Within double-quotes, a backslash is only
removed when the next character has a special meaning (essentially $, `,
", \), otherwise, it remains and loses its quoting ability. This means,
that the backslash would remain as a literal character in our patterns on
the right of % or #, and they would not work anymore as intended.

That's strange...

I thought that VAR=<any string without $IFS character in it> would behave
identically to VAR="<the same string as above>". You seem to be saying
that they should act differently.

quoted

If that is the case, either the above or my [?] would work it around, I
would think.

[?] instead of \? is certainly also worth a try.

I obviously agree. Besides, [?] would sidestep the tricky backslash vs
double quote issue entirely, so it would be a more robust solution to
leave it around than "sometimes you need to avoid double-quote and some
other times you would need double-quote" for other people to mimic writing
tests later.