read: A LINE INTO VARIABLES

The last variable takes the whole rest of the line, inner spaces and all; without -r the backslash disappears, and a line with no final newline gives status 1 — although the variable is already full

Built as a memo rather than a table: the thing worth hanging it up for reads across the room, with the full reference in smaller type below it.

Three sizes in one archive — from a sheet on the fridge to a poster on the wall.

Formats: A4 · A3 · A2
What you get: Print-ready PDFs, one per size, with every letterform converted to outlines — nothing to install, nothing to shift.
Subject: code · everyone · memo · study

Read from top to bottom: how one line falls into different numbers of variables, what the backslash does with and without -r, and what read decides beyond splitting. Values printed by /bin/sh.

A FILE WITH NO NEWLINE AT THE END COSTS YOU ITS LAST LINE

A file that does not end with a newline costs you its last line: “the variables specified by the var operands shall be set as described above and the exit status shall be 1”. The variable is already full, and the status is already one.

So a “while read” loop never runs its body for that line — a run on two lines with no final newline gave one turn instead of two, although the second value was sitting in the variable.

On the sheet

Read from top to bottom: how one line falls into different numbers of variables, what the backslash does with and without -r, and what read decides beyond splitting. Values printed by /bin/sh.
Colour carries meaning, but meaning never rests on colour alone — the sheet reads in black and white.
Nothing about how it was made: the sheet carries only what the reader needs.

Printing

Three sizes in the archive: A4 — 210×297 mm, A3 — 297×420 mm, A2 — 420×594 mm.
All text is converted to outlines. No fonts to install, and nothing shifts on another machine.
White background and sparing fills — it prints on a home printer without draining the cartridge.
Margins of at least 10 mm: a home printer cannot print to the edge.
No stroke thinner than 0.3 mm, so nothing disappears in print.

Why the numbers can be trusted. Every countable number here is computed from data rather than typed in, and the sheet must pass 11 independent checks before it is allowed to build — how many items there are, the order they come in, and the claim in the highlighted box itself. If one fails, there is no file.

read: A LINE INTO VARIABLES

A FILE WITH NO NEWLINE AT THE END COSTS YOU ITS LAST LINE

On the sheet

Printing

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