Re: Variables can’t contain NUL

[Clark Wang]

On Wed, Jun 20, 2018 at 10:22 PM, George <tetsujin@scope-eye.net> wrote:

>
> Personally I do think some method of handling arbitrary binary data in the
> shell would be a welcome addition (and I think zsh provides that - don't
> remember if ksh does)
>

Ksh93 has "typeset -b" which defines vars for binary data (actually base64
encoded). E.g.:

[STEP 100] $ echo ${.sh.version}
Version AJM 93u+ 2012-08-01
[STEP 101] $ typeset -b var
[STEP 102] $ var=$( echo hello world | base64 )
[STEP 103] $ echo $var
aGVsbG8gd29ybGQK
[STEP 104] $ printf %B var
hello world
[STEP 105] $