Andreas Kähäri <andreas.kah...@abc.se> writes:
The ksh(1) shell sets IFS by default to a space, tab and a
newline
character.
Those are the defaults used when IFS is not set _as a
variable_. If you log in, and run env(1), in the absence of any
manual setting of IFS in .kshrc or whatever, you'll see that IFS
is not listed, because it's not 'set' in the shell variable
sense. When it's not set, the shell assumes that IFS has the value
you listed.
(Additionally, a shell variable not being set is _not_ the same as
that variable being set to the empty string.)
Alexis.
