James Youngman wrote: > I'd doubt that there are gnulib tests for which this will really make > a difference, but
There is none in coreutils, but there *are* tests there that set IFS. Just none that use these relatively new functions in an affected scope. > ( IFS=' '; printf '%s\n' "$*"; ) > > is perhaps slightly more reproducible. Good suggestion. Setting IFS does seem prudent. However, I'm inclined to use a subshell only if necessary: warn_ () { case $IFS in ' '*) printf '%s\n' "$*" 1>&$stderr_fileno_ ;; *) ( IFS=' '; printf '%s\n' "$*" 1>&$stderr_fileno_ ) ;; esac } Thanks!