On Tue, 12 Aug 2003, David Laight wrote:
> The Posix spec:
>     http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007904975/xrat/xcu_chap02.html
> notes that:
>     It would be desirable to include the statement "The characters from an
>     enclosed "${" to the matching '}' shall not be affected by the double
>     quotes", similar to the one for "$()" .  However, historical practice in
>     the System V shell prevents this.

Interesting.  I have always interpreted the use of the term "word"
in the sh(1) man page description of "${parameter:-word}", read in
conjunction with the definition of "word" elsewhere in the same
man page, as implying that stuff between the ":-" and the "}" was
recursively parsed as if it had appeared at the top level.

> Maybe we shold close this...

Yes, the problem was fixed soon after I raised the PR.  See
src/regress/bin/sh/varquote.sh for test cases.

--apb (Alan Barrett)