Skip to main content

You are not logged in. Your edit will be placed in a queue until it is peer reviewed.

We welcome edits that make the post easier to understand and more valuable for readers. Because community members review edits, please try to make the post substantially better than how you found it, for example, by fixing grammar or adding additional resources and hyperlinks.

3
  • I should add that I am actually only concerned about alphabetic characters, so "alphanumeric" was inaccurate. I don't need to catch [0-9]. Commented Jun 29, 2020 at 5:38
  • What is your expected output and your input string? Clearly this is an XY problem Commented Jun 29, 2020 at 5:48
  • This is an exercise for generating acronyms from names that may contain spaces, dashes, underscores, or some shell globbing characters. I am able to pass my particular set of tests with IFS=" |-|_|*". I understand XY problem, but I wanted to understand the limits of using IFS, and think about how I might be able to solve it with an unlimited variation of possible delimiters. I read about IFS, but was unable to find specifics about that limitation. Thanks for your answer. Commented Jun 29, 2020 at 5:55