======Parameter Expansion======

Parameter expansion is one of the most important (and powerful) parts of zsh scripting.
Its behaviour may be changed by various modifiers and flags, which will be discussed below.
The [[http://zsh.dotsrc.org/Doc/Release/zsh_13.html#SEC47|zshexpn(1)]] manpage is a detailed reference
about every single aspect of parameter expansion. We do not intend to copy its content.
So, if the discription here may seem a little incomplete, consult the manual to get a complete description.

To answer one FAQ right here:

Before we start, note one special behaviour of zsh parameter expansion, that is very different
from most (all?) other shells: By default (that is, unless the ''shwordsplit'' option is not set),
unquoted parameters are __not__ split at ''$IFS'' characters. Please keep that in mind, because things
like this will not work:

<code>
zsh% mycommand="ls -la"
zsh% $mycommand
zsh: command not found: ls -la
</code>

To temporarily switch on ''shwordsplit'' use the = modifier. (eg: ${=mycommand}).

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  * [[scripting:parammod|Parameter Modifiers]]
  * [[scripting:paramflags|Parameter Expansion Flags]]