${(p)…}: Enable escape sequences in flags

(p) enables escape sequences and variable substitution for options of the following flags.

By default, options are taken literally, for example ${(s:\t:)name} splits words at a literal \t.

With (p), ${(ps:\t:)name} is splitting words at a TAB character and ${(ps:$sep:)name} splits using the value of variable sep.

Links

• Zsh manual on parameter expansion flags

Examples

Split string at TABs

1 2	tsv=$'a\tb\tc' echo ${(ps:\t:)tsv}

Output:

1

a b c