Shell Programming and Scripting

s/irregardless/regardless/

Putting IFS= before the read command changes it only for the read command itself; it doesn't affect it in the body of the loop or anywhere else.

Inside the while loop (which is not the same as before the read command), it will be local to the loop if it is in a subshell, but not if it is executed in the calling environment.

Not the difference in scope in the following examples:

Code:

c=trdcv
echo q |
 while IFS="d" read
 do
   printf "c: %s\n" $c
 done

echo
IFS="d"
echo q |
 while read
 do
   printf "c: %s\n" $c
 done

The output is:

Code:

c: trdcv

c: tr
c: cv

When IFS is defined before the read command, it does not affect anything else. When defined before the while command, it is in effect everywhere.