From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: <2bc7f7514e0477d93a52ae734545a36f@plan9.bell-labs.com> To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Subject: Re: [9fans] dumb question From: "rob pike, esq." MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Fri, 28 Jun 2002 12:14:47 -0400 Topicbox-Message-UUID: bdc00090-eaca-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 Well, rc has $ifs so you can always use the same familiar trick, but it's not intellectually satisfying. I have been quietly pushing a uniform quoting convention through Plan 9, with good library support (tokenize, %q). The result is that if `{} used tokenize I think that not only would this specific example work, but the need for hacks like $ifs could be reduced. If programs consistently quoted their output, consistency would improve. I regret blanks in file names, but they're here to stay if you do any interoperability with Windows. Windows being a royal irritation doesn't mean that the problems it raises are not more generally apparent. The quoting stuff in Plan 9 came in for other reasons having to do with consistent output from commands and devices. If it also leads to sensible handling of blanks in file names, good for us. -rob