Re: preserving single quotes

[Ray Andrews <rayandrews@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 2022-09-28 03:00, Stephane Chazelas wrote:

> Use ${(Q)${(z)dd}} instead of $=dd. See `man zshexpn` for the meaning
> of (z) and (Q).
>
> Roman.
Didn't work.
> Use either:
>
> dd() aptitude search '?name(libreoffice-java-common)'
> ee=$(dd)

Cool.  So we can just create a little impromptu function.  Never tried 
that but it works.  I sorta understand that since the string isn't being 
handed off to something else, zsh doesn't feel the need to strip off the 
quotes -- the function is just as written.
> Or:
>
> dd="aptitude search '?name(libreoffice-java-common)'"
> ee=$(eval -- $dd)
My old friend eval.  But Bart advises to get away from it.  Anyway it 
works for now.

> Or:
>
> dd=( aptitude search '?name(libreoffice-java-common)' )
> # or
...
> ee=$( "$dd[@]" )
Works.  But that puzzles me, it seems simplest, but how is that that 
saving the aptitude string as an array preserves the single quotes? It 
seems unintuitive that the method of saving the string would make the 
difference.

> $=dd just does $IFS-splitting. If $dd is meant to contain shell code,
> you should use eval to evaluate it. But to store code, you
> generally use functions not variables. The z and Q parameter
> expansion flags can do the same tokenisation and quote removal
> as the shell syntax parser does, but I don't think you want to
> go there.
I've never had anything but grief in the Q continuum.  Hard to express 
it, but it all seems so .... ad hoc, vague, Rube Goldberg, full of 
gotchas -- (qqq) doesn't work on Mondays -- impossible to remember, 
forced ... but your solutions above are crisp, and understandable and 
rememberable.

Thanks gentlemen both.