Author: Stan Eisenstat
Subject: Re: [Cs323] Could you explain this output?
Date: Saturday, 17 Oct 2020, 15:43:31

    > Message Posted By: Unknown
    >
    > [... @cobra hw3]$ /c/cs323/Hwk3/mcBash
    > (1)$ ${a-{}{}{}}
    > >> {{}{}}
    >
    > I thought it should be {}{}{}

As stated in the specification:

  * WORD is any sequence of characters that ends with the first } not escaped
    by a backslash and not part of one of the expansions above; ...

Thus in the line above, NAME = a and WORD = { so that
${a-{} expands to { and the rest of the line is left
unchanged.

--Stan-