I’m sure some of you have absolute monstrosities of sigils (I know I do, in my .zshrc alone). Post them without context, and try and guess what other users’s lines are. If you want to provide context or guess, use the markdown editor to spoiler-tag your guesses and explanations!
spoiler
The given shell script appears to be written in the Zsh shell syntax. Let’s break it down step by step:
[ "${(Oa@)argv[1,-2]}" "${argv[-1]//(#m)[\[\]]/${(#)$((6 ^ #MATCH))}}" ]
: This line encloses the entire script within square brackets[ ]
. In Zsh, square brackets are commonly used for conditional expressions."${(Oa@)argv[1,-2]}"
: This part refers to an expansion of theargv
array, which typically holds command-line arguments passed to the script. Here’s what the individual components mean:${(Oa@)}
: This is a parameter expansion flag in Zsh that sorts the elements of the array in ascending order and expands each element as separate words. The@
symbol is used to indicate the array variableargv
.argv[1,-2]
: This is array slicing syntax that extracts a sub-array of elements from index 1 to the second-to-last element (-2
). It excludes the last element, which is assumed to be the final argument.In summary, this part expands and sorts the elements of the
argv
array, excluding the last argument."${argv[-1]//(#m)[\[\]]/${(#)$((6 ^ #MATCH))}}"
: This part refers to another expansion of theargv
array, specifically targeting the last element (argv[-1]
). Here’s what the individual components mean:"${argv[-1]//pattern/replacement}"
: This is a parameter expansion that performs pattern substitution within the last element of theargv
array.(#m)
: This is an extended globbing flag in Zsh that enables multiline mode for pattern matching. It allows patterns to match across multiple lines.[\[\]]
: This is the pattern to match. It matches any occurrence of square brackets ([
or]
)./${(#)$((6 ^ #MATCH))}}
: This is the replacement part of the substitution. It calculates the bitwise XOR (^
) of 6 and the matched pattern (#MATCH
), and uses(())
to perform arithmetic expansion. The(#)
flag is used to indicate that the result should be expanded.In summary, this part performs a substitution on the last element of the
argv
array, replacing any occurrence of square brackets with the result of a bitwise XOR operation between 6 and the matched pattern.Overall, the script appears to process command-line arguments, sort and manipulate them, and then enclose the result in a conditional expression for further evaluation or use. The exact purpose or context of the script can only be determined by understanding its broader context and usage.
Corrections
O
is descending order.o
is ascending order. In particular(Oa)
keeps the array order, but flips it.Not here. As a PE flag,
@
puts array elements in separate words, even if the parameter is enclosed in quotes.The
#MATCH
gives the codepoint of the (first) character in$MATCH
. The(#)
flag turns codepoints into characters.Full context
This is in a joke function called
]
, which is like[
but you have to specify the elements in reverse order and end it with a[
. This uses bit-fiddling to swap[
and]
in the last parameter because I’m a masochist.