From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] dumb question
From: rog@vitanuova.com
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Date: Fri, 28 Jun 2002 17:31:11 +0100
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doug:
> The question is, what would be a similar mechanism for rc that you'd
> find acceptable?

the same mechanism applies in rc ($ifs rather than $IFS).

but just fixing it in the shell doesn't apply to the multitude of
little nasty things that still need tampering with to work in the
presence of quoted filenames.

whereas before it was possible to just manipulate text irrespective of
whether it was a filename or a word, now you have to unquote filenames
on input and quote on output, so many things that manipulate text will
need to understand rc-style quotes.

in 3e, the internal representation of a filename is the same as its
external representation, and a lot of tools gain simplicity from this
identity transformation.

there are so many things in the system that potentially or actually
break, i really don't see why we can't just transform spaces at the
boundaries of the system (dossrv, ftpfs, et al) and hence be assured
that *nothing* breaks, rather than adding hack after hack to existing
tools.

rob:
> it seems the shell can and should be fixed. i will entertain
> proposals that include code.

diffs to dosfs? :-)

  cheers,
    rog.