I might have something absolutely wrong, but it looks convincing to me, that setting IFS as one of the commands in the pre-do/done list has absolutely no effect.
The outer IFS (outside the while construct) prevails in all examples shown in the script below..
What's going on here? Have I got the wrong idea of what IFS does in this situation? I expected the array-split results to be as shown in the "expected" column.
#!/bin/bash
xifs() { echo -n "$(echo -n "$IFS" | xxd -p)"; } # allow for null $IFS
show() { x=($1)
echo -ne " (${#x[@]})\t |"
for ((j=0;j<${#x[@]};j++)); do
echo -n "${x[j]}|"
done
echo -ne "\t"
xifs "$IFS"; echo
}
data="a b c"
echo -e "----- -- -- \t --------\tactual"
echo -e "outside \t IFS \tinside"
echo -e "loop \t Field \tloop"
echo -e "IFS NR NF \t Split \tIFS (actual)"
echo -e "----- -- -- \t --------\t-----"
IFS=$' \t\n'; xifs "$IFS"; echo "$data" | while read; do echo -ne '\t 1'; show "$REPLY"; done
IFS=$' \t\n'; xifs "$IFS"; echo "$data" | while IFS= read; do echo -ne '\t 2'; show "$REPLY"; done
IFS=$' \t\n'; xifs "$IFS"; echo "$data" | while IFS=b read; do echo -ne '\t 3'; show "$REPLY"; done
IFS=" "; xifs "$IFS"; echo "$data" | while read; do echo -ne '\t 4'; show "$REPLY"; done
IFS=" "; xifs "$IFS"; echo "$data" | while IFS= read; do echo -ne '\t 5'; show "$REPLY"; done
IFS=" "; xifs "$IFS"; echo "$data" | while IFS=b read; do echo -ne '\t 6'; show "$REPLY"; done
IFS=; xifs "$IFS"; echo "$data" | while read; do echo -ne '\t 7'; show "$REPLY"; done
IFS=; xifs "$IFS"; echo "$data" | while IFS=" " read; do echo -ne '\t 8'; show "$REPLY"; done
IFS=; xifs "$IFS"; echo "$data" | while IFS=b read; do echo -ne '\t 9'; show "$REPLY"; done
IFS=b; xifs "$IFS"; echo "$data" | while IFS= read; do echo -ne '\t10'; show "$REPLY"; done
IFS=b; xifs "$IFS"; echo "$data" | while IFS=" " read; do echo -ne '\t11'; show "$REPLY"; done
echo -e "----- -- -- \t --------\t-----"
Output:
----- -- -- -------- actual
outside IFS inside assigned
loop Field loop # inner
IFS NR NF Split IFS # expected IFS
----- -- -- -------- ----- # --------- --------
20090a 1 (3) |a|b|c| 20090a #
20090a 2 (3) |a|b|c| 20090a # |a b c| IFS=
20090a 3 (3) |a|b|c| 20090a # |a | c| IFS=b
20 4 (3) |a|b|c| 20 #
20 5 (3) |a|b|c| 20 # |a b c IFS=
20 6 (3) |a|b|c| 20 # |a | c| IFS=b
7 (1) |a b c| #
8 (1) |a b c| # |a|b|c| IFS=" "
9 (1) |a b c| # |a | c| IFS=b
62 10 (2) |a | c| 62 # |a b c| IFS=
62 11 (2) |a | c| 62 # |a|b|c| IFS=" "
----- -- -- -------- ----- --------- -------
