Scripting problem

[Warren Block]

On Sun, 8 Oct 2017, Paul Schmehl wrote:

> --On October 8, 2017 at 10:00:17 AM +0200 Polytropon <freebsd at edvax.de> 
> wrote:
>> 
>> Now -s will receive "Foo Bar Baz" (without the quotes). Use double
>> quotes because you want shell expansion / variable evaluation.
>> 
>> It's not mutt's fault. :-)
>
> I've considered myself a journeyman in FreeBSD, having used it for about 
> twenty years now. I guess I need to go back to being an apprentice. I 
> obviously don't understand how the shell works yet.
>
> Oh well, you're never too old to learn.

Quoting is sh's biggest weakness.  Well, that and lack of basic data 
structures, and the weak logical structures, and so on.

Someone once said that if a script is longer than twenty lines or so, it 
probably ought to be done in a real scripting langugage.  That was me, 
but Stephen Bourne has also said it.  Yes, that Stephen Bourne.