Explain ${var:-val} and ${var+val} - sh

Can any one explain this format?
${name:-$devi}
Example:
"${1+"$#"}" will check for that first variable to be set , if not it will use that
command line argument.
What is the difference between :- and + between those variables?

${var:-val}
is the same as ${var} if var is set and non-null, otherwise it expands to val. This is used to specify a default value for a variable.
${var+val}
expands to nothing if var is unset, otherwise it expands to val. This is used to supply an alternate value for a variable.
"${1+"$#"}"
is a workaround for a bug in old shell versions. If you just wrote "$#", it would expand to "" when no arguments were supplied, instead of expanding to nothing; the script would then act as if a single, empty argument had been supplied. This syntax first checks whether $1 is set -- if there's no first argument, then there are obviously no arguments at all. If $1 is unset, it expands to nothing, otherwise it's safe to use "$#".
Most modern shell versions don't have this bug, so you can just write "$#" without the special check. I'm not sure if there are any other common use cases for the + construct in shell variable expansion.

Related

implicit __source__ argument to julia macro can't be used within quote block

I'll start with my code:
macro example(args...)
local s = __source__
println(s) # This part works, showing macro is called on line 9
quote
println(s) # Julia tells me this variable "s" is not defined
println(__source__) # Likewise, "__source__" is not defined here either
end
end
#example 42 # Line 9 of my file
In my macro above I want to record the line number that is calling the macro and use it within my quote block. Both capturing it in a variable outside the quote block and using it within, or using it directly in the quote block don't work. My understanding is the code outside the quote block runs at parse-time, and the expression returned from the quote block is evaluated at run-time.
I feel like there must be a way to capture that variable and inject it right into the expression that will be evaluated later, but I haven't figured out how to do that. Any help here is appreciated. If there is a better way to do this let me know.
I ended up finding out an answer on my own. In the second line if I changed __source__ to __source__.line or __source__.file it worked fine as long as I then used $ to interpolate the result into the expression the macro returned. I'm still not sure why __source__ on its own didn't work, but using either .line or .file methods is working for me now.
I'm experiencing a similar problem trying to use __source__.
I think I can offer insight into why source.line, etc worked though.
The value of source.line is an integer. The value of source.fike is a string. Numbers and strings evaluate to themselves.
A symbol, on the other hand, evaluates to whatever value it has in the environment.

Xcode breakpoint shell command argument length

Trying to pass a large string to a shell script using a breakpoint in Xcode
let value = Array(repeating: "a", count: 1500).joined()
let string = "{\"key\": \"\(value)\"}"
Unfortunately, the string is being truncated. Is this limitation documented and can it be overcome?
It's been nearly a year since you asked this, and I'm not sure if it will solve your question, but I've recently had a similar problem so thought I'd share my solution.
I had two issues:
LLDB was truncating any arguments to my shell script (and string variables printed in the console using po foo) to 1023 characters. I believe this is the issue to which your question relates.
Xcode was incorrectly confusing a comma , in my string as a separator for multiple arguments (e.g. passing foo, bar, and baz as arguments to the script wouldn't work correctly if any of the variables contained a , as Xcode would try to create another argument).
So, firstly, the LLDB issue...
It seems that by default LLDB has a limit on the character length that it will print to the console (or pass to a shell script via a breakpoint argument) of around 1023 characters. You can easily change this to something larger by setting another breakpoint before the breakpoint that uses your variable and running (lldb) set set target.max-string-summary-length 10000 in the console. This can be a bit annoying so I created a ~/.lldbinit file and placed set set target.max-string-summary-length 10000 in there instead so I don't have to keep setting it in the console.
Secondly, the comma issue...
Inside the Edit breakpoint... menu that you provided a screenshot of above there is the option to not only provide a path to a script but to also provide arguments. I can see from your question that you provided the argument #string#. For my script, I was passing multiple arguments, which Xcode allows you to do using a comma separated list, e.g. #foo#, #bar#, #baz#. Each of these arguments was a string.
I noticed that sometimes one or more of these strings would truncate if they contained a comma: ,.
So the string:
{ "num_friends" : "7" }
would be passed to my script as expected. But the string:
{ "num_friends" : "7", "num_deleted_friends" : "1" }
would truncate and would be passed to my script as two separate arguments. It seems that Xcode would split any string with a , even when entered using #string#.
I validated this in my script by simply using something like:
for var in "$#"
do
echo "$var"
echo "===="
done
Where $# expands to contain each argument. From this I could see that #string# was being correctly passed to my script but separated as multiple arguments wherever there was a ,. So if #string# contained a comma my script would print:
#"{ \"num_friends\" : \"7\"
====
\"num_deleted_friends\" : \"1\" }"
instead of what I expected which was:
#"{ \"num_friends\" : \"7\", \"num_deleted_friends\" : \"1\" }"
So it seems like it might be a bug in how Xcode passes strings inside # expressions in the breakpoint editor window.
My crude solution has been to just replace any commas with another character and then replace them back again inside my script. There's probably a better way to do this but I don't require it for my needs.

What is the meaning of ${} in powershell?

I have a script where function parameters are expressed like this:
param(
${param1},
${param2},
${param3}
)
What does it mean? I have been unable to find documentation on this.
What's the point of writing parameters that way instead of the more usual
param(
$param1,
$param2,
$param3
)
?
#MikeZ's answer is quite correct in explaining the example in the question, but as far as addressing the question title, there is actually more to say! The ${} notation actually has two uses; the second one is a hidden gem of PowerShell:
That is, you can use this bracket notation to do file I/O operations if you provide a drive-qualified path, as defined in the MSDN page Provider Paths.
(The above image comes from the Complete Guide to PowerShell Punctuation, a one-page wallchart freely available for download, attached to my recent article at Simple-Talk.com.)
They are both just parameter declarations. The two snippets are equivalent. Either syntax can be used here, however the braced form allows characters that would not otherwise be legal in variable names. From the PowerShell 3.0 language specification:
There are two ways of writing a variable name: A braced variable name, which begins with $, followed by a curly bracket-delimited set of one or more almost-arbitrary characters; and an ordinary variable name, which also begins with $, followed by a set of one or more characters from a more restrictive set than a braced variable name allows. Every ordinary variable name can be expressed using a corresponding braced variable name.
From about_Variables
To create or display a variable name that includes spaces or special characters, enclose the variable name in braces. This directs Windows PowerShell to interpret the characters in the variable name literally.
For example, the following command creates and then displays a variable named "save-items".
C:\PS> ${save-items} = "a", "b", "c"
C:\PS> ${save-items}
a
b
c
They are equivalent. It's just an alternative way of declaring a variable.
If you have characters that are illegal in a normal variable, you'd use the braces (think of it as "escaping" the variablename).
There is one additional usage.
One may have variable names like var1, var2, var11, var12, var101, etc.
Regardless if this is desirable variable naming, it just may be.
Using brackets one can precisely determine what is to be used:
assignment of $var11 may be ambiguous, using ${var1}1 or ${var11} leaves no room for mistakes.

variable expansion inside namespace-qualified variable name

Problem
I want to perform parametric variable evaluation. The to-be-evaluated variable name is constructed with a string concatenation - from a namespace part and a name part being defined in a variable. Example: env:$var, where the value of $var is, for instance "OS". However, while using the expression
${env:OS}
gives the expected value Windows_NT, the construct
$var="OS"
${env:$var}
is a null-valued expression.
Motivation
I'm not really intereseted in the value of environment variables (but this was the simplest example, I could find). What I really want, is to refer to the content of a file via the ${c:<filename>} construct. I want to perform several, conditional in-file string substitutions and, I'd like to use a construct similar to this:
<identify files in a foreach>
${c:<filename>} -replace 'this', 'that' > ${c:<new filename>}
To achieve this, I need <filename> to be a value of an iterator variable.
Question
If the value of $var is OS, what shall be at ..., if I expect the value of the following expression to be Windows_NT?
${env:...var...}
Use Get-ChildItem on the env: PSDrive and expand the Value of the result:
(ls env:$var).Value
Edit: As #PetSerAl suggested in the comments using Get-Content is a more elegant approach:
(cat env:$var)

Tcl set command

Quick question... I'm trying the following:
set changedir "cd $JSDIR/"
eval $changedir
..Where $JSDIR is defined already. Running this script gives the error: "set: Variable name must begin with a letter."
What's the fix?
Thanks.
That's not an error message generated by Tcl, because Tcl's variables most definitely do not need to begin with a letter. OK, it tends to be convenient to keep them alphanumeric because the $var shorthand syntax is more restrictive than the general space of variable names, but the set var form can handle virtually anything.
I'm guessing that script is being evaluated by something that isn't Tcl, perhaps bash?
Try to set changedir cd ${JSDIR/} instead
This message can appear when in fact the variable name is entirely correct, and the real problem is that the variable value needs to be quoted. Try instead of: set changedir "cd $JSDIR//"