[ILUG] alias

[Philip Reynolds]

kevin lyda's [kevin at suberic.net] 70 lines of wisdom included:
> according to the sh man page:
> 
>     *   Expands to the positional parameters, starting from
> 	one.   When  the  expansion  occurs  within  double
> 	quotes,  it expands to a single word with the value
> 	of each parameter separated by the first  character
> 	of  the  IFS  special variable.  That is, ``$*'' is
> 	equivalent to ``$1c$2c...'', where c is  the  first
> 	character of the value of the IFS variable.  If IFS
> 	is null or unset, the parameters are  separated  by
> 	spaces.
>     @   Expands to the positional parameters, starting from
> 	one.   When  the  expansion  occurs  within  double
> 	quotes,  each parameter expands as a separate word.
> 	That is, `` $@'' is equivalent to ``$1'' ``$2'' ...
> 	When there are no positional parameters, ``$@'' and
> 	$@ expand to nothing (i.e., they are removed).
> 
> any shell scripting gurus have comments on this?  i've been kind of
> curious since i read it.

I'm not sure if you're having trouble understanding what the manpage
means, so I'll give an explanation and if I'm being patronising by
assuming you don't, I apologise :)
I would in no way call myself a shell scripting guru either.

This is my general assumption of using both:

$* is, for want of a better term, like a string, it's just a string
which each parameter separated by IFS (if IFS is null or unset like
the manpage says, the separator is a space)

$@ is like an array, IFS makes no difference. If you want to loop
through the arguments.

Basically, if you just want to print all the arguments or use IFS,
then $* is fine. $@ is handier when you want to handle each argument
separately.

This is at least my understanding.

Regards,
Phil.