Re: [9front] Re: commit 2f8a59f4b5bfe028c022855acc19666d69eed909

[hiro <23hiro@gmail.com>]

the examples are all weird. i still do not understand what this allows
you to do.

On 7/9/21, Stanley Lieber <sl@stanleylieber.com> wrote:
> 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
>