Re: [9front] Re: commit 2f8a59f4b5bfe028c022855acc19666d69eed909

[Stanley Lieber <sl@stanleylieber.com>]

On July 9, 2021 11:01:19 AM EDT, ori@eigenstate.org wrote:
>Quoth Stanley Lieber <sl@stanleylieber.com>:
>> On July 9, 2021 3:48:39 AM EDT, Anthony Martin <ality@pbrane.org> wrote:
>> >> rc: add subshell-function syntax
>> >>
>> >> fn foo @{bar} is now equivalent to
>> >> fn foo {@{bar}}. As a side effect,
>> >> this disallows creating functions
>> >> named after keywords without first
>> >> quoting them.
>> >
>> >Respectfully, this is just wrong. @ is a
>> >unary operator. Repurposing it to define
>> >a new special kind of function is a bit
>> >much.
>> >
>> >What does this buy you over being explicit
>> >at the call site?
>> >
>> >	fn foo { bar }
>> >
>> >	@foo
>> >
>> >One color of function is enough. What's
>> >next?
>> >
>> >	fn foo !{ bar }
>> >
>> >to mean that foo always negates the exit
>> >status of its body?
>> >
>> >The new quoting requirement for functions
>> >named after keywords seems fine, on the
>> >other hand. But is it worth the backwards
>> >incompatibility?
>> >
>> >Thanks,
>> >  Anthony
>> >
>> 
>> if we're introducing breaking changes to important programs like the shell, can we please at least post a warning on the mailing list?
>
>(caveat -- it's compatible unless you
>happen to be using functions named '@',
>'`', etc -- which, again, you
>can't use without quoting.)
>
>I don't think most people even realize
>that it's possible to name an rc function:
>
>	'@{this is a valid} function name!'
>
>Either way, noted -- I'll post next time.
>
>

thanks. changes to rc are tricky since of all things we expect it to behave consistently from day to day. I do think I misunderstood the change itself. I've been running sysupdate from cron and piping the output to an e-mail to myself -- the commit messages as printed by sysupdate are truncated.

sl