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

[Lawrence Velázquez]

On Mon, Jan 23, 2023, at 4:17 PM, Chandler wrote:
> I know it's safer to use curly braces and I've been doing that more and 
> more

As an aside, unquoted ${var} is not really "safer" than unquoted
$var; they both undergo subsequent splitting and globbing.  The
braces only affect how the shell determines the parameter name.
>From the man page:

        ${parameter}
                The value of _parameter_ is substituted.  The braces
                are required when parameter is a positional parameter
                with more than one digit, or when _parameter_ is
                followed by a character which is not to be interpreted
                as part of its name.

Examples:

        $ set -- {a..z}
        $ echo "${10}" "$10"
        j a0

        $ foo=1 foobar=2
        $ echo "${foo}bar" "$foobar"
        1bar 2

So ${var} may relieve you from having to remember how parameter
names are parsed, but it is not a substitute for quoting.

-- 
vq