From: Chris Siebenmann <cks>
To: rc
Subject: Re: New rc snapshot, includes "the equals hack"
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2000 18:23:50 -0500 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <00Aug22.182359edt.44204@hawkwind.utcs.utoronto.ca> (raw)
In-Reply-To: byron's message of Mon, 21 Aug 2000 19:28:01 -0500. <200008212328.QAA17096@rakitzis.com>
| Well, the principle of "free carets" already establishes that there
| can be some counterintuitive parsing:
The difference to me is that 'free carets' doesn't move things around;
it merely logically connects things that are already visually connected.
This lets it work intuitively and do what the user expects. By contrast,
the '=' hack does move things around, and I think that's the problem.
It's also incomplete and surprising.
So we have:
; echo a = b
a=b
; echo a= b
a=b
; echo a =b
a=b
Bonus unpleasant surprise:
; echo =b
;
And we haven't even gotten away from needing quotes in some situations:
; echo a==b
syntax error
; echo =
syntax error
I think that rearranging what the user types is jarringly out of place
and counterintuitive.
| I think there is enough historical precedent about the use of unquoted
| ='s in shells that to be forced quote them is a truly annoying bug.
I would rather be annoyed periodically than (unpleasantly) surprised.
I fear that the current '=' hack is likely to deliver a fair amount of
the latter.
- cks
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2000-08-22 23:23 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 17+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2000-08-22 0:28 Byron Rakitzis
2000-08-22 23:23 ` Chris Siebenmann [this message]
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2000-08-23 1:03 Byron Rakitzis
2000-08-18 21:14 Bengt Kleberg
2000-08-15 20:25 smd
2000-08-15 14:32 smd
2000-08-15 22:51 ` Smarasderagd
2000-08-17 3:53 ` Decklin Foster
2000-08-21 23:21 ` Chris Siebenmann
2000-08-22 11:51 ` Carlo Strozzi
2000-08-17 10:49 ` Tim Goodwin
2000-08-15 7:28 Byron Rakitzis
2000-08-15 6:41 Byron Rakitzis
2000-08-11 14:01 Tim Goodwin
2000-08-15 2:21 ` Paul Haahr
2000-08-15 4:21 ` Gary Carvell
2000-08-15 14:52 ` Mark K. Gardner
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