Re: [9front] [PATCH] awk(1): quote argument for -v option

["Sigrid Solveig Haflínudóttir" <sigrid@ftrv.se>]

Quoth Kurt H Maier <khm@sciops.net>:
> On Tue, Nov 29, 2022 at 01:10:26PM +0100, Anders Damsgaard wrote:
> > Dear all,
> > 
> > Running awk from rc, I found that I need to quote the arguments to awk's
> > -v option, as in:
> > 
> > 	awk -v 'myvar=asdf' 'BEGIN{print myvar}'
> > 
> > However, the awk man page specifies this without quotes as "awk -v
> > myvar=asdf".  I now realize that it will not work without quotes because
> > rc tries to interpret the assignment operator.
> > 
> > Is this just a beginner mistake, being used to unix behavior, or worth
> > documenting as in the patch below?
> > 
> > Thanks, Anders
> 
> I guess I'll be that guy again
> 
> I know that the quoting quirk is a characteristic of rc and not whatever
> other environment one might conceivably use to launch awk.  I get that
> under most unix shells this is a non-issue.  However, the quoted variant
> also works fine in e.g. bash and ksh and so forth.  It's all the same to
> awk.
> 
> I submit as my actual argument that having documentation containing
> examples which, when copied and pasted into the primary UI of the
> project, do not work, is bad form.  People read man pages to learn how
> to use shit, not to get a sense of the general aesthetic of a given
> command were we to run it on v7 Unix.  The shit we say should work
> should work.  
> 
> I vote the patch goes in.
> 
> khm

Wasn't there a patch somewhere for Plan 9 Port(??) that made the
quoting a bit more relaxed when NOT specifying env vars?  I'd be more
inclined to accept non-quoted variant in parameters.  Having to quote
those is annoying, I want the computer to figure out what I'm doing,
not to baby-sit rc.