print -v hickup

[jghub]

not sure whether this is as it should be but wanted to ask:

x=1 && print -v x # → 1
typeset -i x=1 $$ print -v x  # → @

that also happens in ksh93u+. maybe I am misunderstanding something about print -v? I have recently started to use it as a convenient way to get formatted output for arrays, especially associative arrays, but there the content was "string" anyway. so I am not sure what "without converting to string" regarding %B format means in printf --man and whether the described behaviour is to be expected.

[McDutchie]

print --man:

 -v              Treat each string as a variable name and write the value in
                 %B format. Cannot be used with -f.

%B here refers to a formatting specifier of the printf command that causes binary output, i.e., the value is output without converting it to a string. In other words, you're getting the binary representation written directly to the terminal. This is of course architecture-dependent for integers.

[jghub]

yes, I saw that (and even found the printf explanation of %B). still was wondering what it should exactly do (instead of just actually just dumping the binary representation). but it seems I was just obtuse... :(.
as said, I "discovered" print -v only recently as a sort of builtin pretty-printer to show basically the same information as typeset -p but nicely formatted (which makes a big difference when looking at a modestly sized assoc. array, e.g.) for variable content and, e.g.

x = (typeset -i a=1 b=2)
print -v x 

yields just such output:

(
	typeset -i b=4
	typeset -i c=0
)

so I somehow was expecting to see the same for simple scalar variable... lesson learnt I guess. --

one last question/idea: "given infinite time", could not print -V ( or -w or -y ("pretty") or...) be made a thing that does print -v style pretty printing (multiline with nested indent for nested data structures like "compound variable of assoc arrays" (including typeset -A -i like ones...) but maintains string representation of numeric types.. naively (I know...) it would seem that the machinery is there and one would "only" have to add the binary-to-string conversion? or would this open a can of worms?

[McDutchie]

[…] e.g.

x = (typeset -i a=1 b=2)
print -v x 

yields just such output:

(
	typeset -i b=4
	typeset -i c=0
)

Hmm. Given the documentation, that print -v output doesn't make much sense, but then using print -v on a compound variable probably doesn't make much sense anyway.

The canonical way of getting that formatted output is expanding the compound variable as a simple scalar variable, "$x" (do quote the expansion to preserve the indentation and line breaks).

$ x=(typeset -i a=1 b=2); print -r "$x"
(
	typeset -i a=1
	typeset -i b=2
)

(Using -r option of print is good practice for handling arbitrary values, because it disables the expansion of backslash escape sequences.)