On Sat, Feb 13, 2010 at 4:05 PM, Dieter Plaetinck <dieter@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > what do you mean context? it only depends on whether the first > character after the variablename is a valid character in a variablename > or not. if it's valid, use braces. if it isn't, no need for braces. Arrays can't be used with $array[4], they need to be used as ${array[4]} Also finding the string length, substitution, etc require braces