$* will undergo word splitting and pathname expansion

[andlrc]

I changed $* to "$@" which will expand parameters as passed and prevent pathname expansion, consider this snippet:

~ $ cat test.sh
#!/usr/bin/env bash
printf "<%s>" $*
printf "\n"
printf "<%s>" "$*"
printf "\n"
printf "<%s>" "$@"
printf "\n"
~ $ ./test.sh 'hello world' 'John' 'Doe'
<hello><world><John><Doe>
<hello world John Doe>
<hello world><John><Doe>

Above each send argument for printf is wrapped in <...>. "$@" is the only expansion that respects the send arguments.

If we run the same test with a literal * the result will be something like:

~ $ ./test.sh '*'
<bin><Desktop><Documents><Downloads><...><...>
<*>
<*>

[twolfson]

I'm fine with the $@ change but can you explain this one more? When will we have a setup that maintainers don't have bash yet have sh?

[dawsbot]

I'm inclined to say this PR will hurt more than help: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10376206/what-is-the-preferred-bash-shebang

[andlrc]

@twolfson @dawsonbotsford

One is guarantied that /bin/sh is on all systems. And since the code is POSIX compatible - and the file is named release.sh - then there is no need to load bash as a faster / more lightweight shell like dash could be symlinked from /bin/sh. Also note that FreeBSD doesn't ship with bash by default

The discussion linked above is concerned about whether or not to use /usr/bin/env sh or simply /bin/sh which makes sense when talking about bash as a user wish to use a newer version of said. But whom are not allowed to change /bin.

But since - as stated before - this code is POSIX compatible the discussion is not as relevant. One could however still argue that they have symlinked /usr/bin/env sh to dash but the system's version is bash in which case the performance boost will be lost. But using /usr/bin/env one extra process needs to be started which also cost something.

Anyway, the main idea behind changing the shebang was that a .sh file should be POSIX compatible and if a shebang is present it should be for the sh executable. I think you can compare it to saving a png file with the .jpg suffix. One could also rename the file to release.bash or release.

[twolfson]

Why are we talking about all systems? This script is only for maintainers and we either use Linux Mint (myself) or OS X (mlmorg). I'm pretty sure this is bike shedding and unrelated to the main problem this PR was trying to solve. Please remove this line of code.