Re: trying to understand scalar subscripting

["Mikael Magnusson" <mikachu@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 04/04/2008, Sebastian Stark <seb-zsh@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
>  In zshparam(1) I read about the possibility to subscript scalar parameters.
> Maybe somebody can help me understanding this.
>
>
>  Fist I set aaa to some scalar value and print it:
>
>         % aaa="fasdf gaag sdlkfjh dsfsags"
>         % print -l $aaa
>         fasdf gaag sdlkfjh dsfsags
>
>  That was expected. Now I expand all elements of the parameters:
>
>         % print -l $aaa[*]
>         fasdf gaag sdlkfjh dsfsags
>
>  Okay, not quite expected. I thought this would print all the characters in
> aaa in a separate line each. But this still does not confuse me enough. So I
> try a subscript range:
>
>         % print -l $aaa[1,3]
>         fas
>
>  This was kind of expected. Now I try to use the w and s:: subscript flags.
> zshparam(1) says they should work with scalars:
>
>         % print -l $aaa[(ws:a:)1,3]
>         fas
>
>  Hm. I thought that would do word splitting because of (w) and also use ,a`
> as the separator instead of , `. But what really confuses me is this:
>
>         % print -l $aaa[(ws:a:)*]
>         zsh: bad math expression: operand expected at `*'
>
>  Huh? One could say what I am doing is completely silly, but when I try to
> do this with a real array I get the same error message:
>
>         % bbb=(fasdf gaag sdlkfjh dsfsags)
>         % print -l $bbb[(ws:a:)*]
>         zsh: bad math expression: operand expected at `*'
>
>  I did this with zsh-4.3.4. Is all that expected behaviour? Should I try
> zsh-4.3.6?

I get the same result as you with your commands, running on 4.3.6. I
don't know why it doesn't work or if it should, but this expression
will give the result you presumably want:
print -l ${${(s:a:)aaa}[*]}
-- 
Mikael Magnusson