Re: [EXT]Re: Suddenly, periods / dots in variable values are converted to space

[Greg Wooledge]

On Mon, Jan 23, 2023 at 05:16:45PM -0700, Chandler wrote:
> Greg Wooledge wrote on 1/23/23 3:08 PM:
> > 1) You forgot to quote.
> > 2) You have somehow managed to set IFS to a value which contains .
> > To fix this:
> > 1) Use quotes when they are needed.  less "$File1" will suppress all
> >     IFS-based splitting.
> > 2) IFS=$' \t\n' or unset IFS
> I see... I've gotten into some bad habits then, I guess!
> Yes, found some bad code setting IFS=. for some reason, fixed!
> Thank you!

If this is in a script, there might be legitimate reasons to change IFS,
but changes to IFS should be localized as much as possible.  Either
localized to a single command, as in:

  IFS=. read -ra myarray ...

or in a function:

  join() { local IFS="$1"; shift; printf '%s\n' "$*"; }

Usually one of those will do the job, but if for some reason you have
to change IFS in a persistent form in the main body of a script, try to
remember to change it back as soon as possible.