I noticed different behaviour between bash-3 and bash-4 when performing parameter expansion on an array with IFS set to a non-space value. For example, on bash-3.2.39, I get:
$ bash -c 'IFS=:; printf "<%s>\n" "${@/q}"' x a b <a b> Whereas on bash-4.0.33, I get: $ bash -c 'IFS=:; printf "<%s>\n" "${@/q}"' x a b <a> <b> Bash-4 seems to give the desired result (leave the array intact), but it's a bug on bash-3? Regards, Freddy Vulto http://fvue.nl