On Mon, 28 Jul 2008 23:44:13 +0200 Xavier <shiningxc@gmail.com> wrote:
Anyway, I have something else, look : [xavier@nx7400 ~]$ array=('' {foo,bar,baz}) [xavier@nx7400 ~]$ [ -z "${array[@]}" ] || echo array not empty bash: [: too many arguments array not empty [xavier@nx7400 ~]$ [ -z "${array[*]}" ] || echo array not empty array not empty
I never understood what the differences between @ and * were though...
The way I understand it "${array[@]}" is expanded to "foo" "bar" "baz", while "${array[*]}" is expanded to "foo%bar%baz" where % is the first character of $IFS (meaning ' ' if not set otherwise). So with @ you get several words for the test, which would explain the observed behaviour. Interestingly enough [[ -z "${array[@]}" ]] seems to work as well...