Re: [9fans] How can I shift a variable other than ?

[erik quanstrom <quanstro@coraid.com>]

On Sat Mar 10 00:17:12 EST 2007, bsdaemon@comcast.net wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 09, 2007 at 11:46:46PM -0500, erik quanstrom wrote:
> >why wouldn't it be backwardly compatable?
> >"(a b) = $*" is currently an error in rc. and i don't
> >believe i've ever seen an rc script that depends on
> >this error. 
> 
> The problem is that then new scrips wouldn't be portable.

ya. right.  is this this the same reason i should check my c code
with the johnson c compiler (being very careful to not use function
prototypes) to make sure it works everwhere?

of course my code will probablly still be broken with the c73
compiler.  hope nobody's still running that.

and now that we've thought of it, we can't fix any rc bugs.  since
scripts that rely on fixed bugs won't run everwhere.

c'mon.  what kind of dusty-deck thinking is this?

> but in that case, you may as well just use Inferno's sh

doesn't run on plan 9.  it's written in limbo and depends on
features of inferno that are not part of plan 9.

> or port es(1)

es hasn't been maintained in a dozen years.  there is a reason
for this.

while es has some great ideas and paul haahr did a really
nice job with it.  it seems to me that let and bindings make
the shell harder to use.  es implements a lot of functonality
in es (and still breaks 10kloc of c).  here's the definition of cd.

	es% whatis cd
	@ dir{if {~ <={%count $dir} 1} {$&cd $dir} {~ <={%count $dir} 0} {%seq {if {%not {~ <={%count $home} 1}} {throw error cd <={if {~ <={%count $home} 0} {result 'cd: no home directory'} {result 'cd: home directory must be one word'}}}} {$&cd $home}} {throw error cd 'usage: cd [directory]'}}


- erik