From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Received: from localhost by hawkwind.utcs.utoronto.ca with SMTP id <44204>; Tue, 22 Aug 2000 18:23:59 -0500
To:	rc
Subject: Re: New rc snapshot, includes "the equals hack" 
In-reply-to: byron's message of Mon, 21 Aug 2000 19:28:01 -0500.
             <200008212328.QAA17096@rakitzis.com> 
Date:	Tue, 22 Aug 2000 18:23:50 -0500
From:	Chris Siebenmann <cks>
Message-Id: <00Aug22.182359edt.44204@hawkwind.utcs.utoronto.ca>

| Well, the principle of "free carets" already establishes that there
| can be some counterintuitive parsing:

 The difference to me is that 'free carets' doesn't move things around;
it merely logically connects things that are already visually connected.
This lets it work intuitively and do what the user expects. By contrast,
the '=' hack does move things around, and I think that's the problem.
It's also incomplete and surprising.

 So we have:
	; echo a = b
	a=b
	; echo a= b
	a=b
	; echo a =b
	a=b
Bonus unpleasant surprise:
	; echo =b
	;
And we haven't even gotten away from needing quotes in some situations:
	; echo a==b
	syntax error
	; echo =
	syntax error

 I think that rearranging what the user types is jarringly out of place
and counterintuitive.

| I think there is enough historical precedent about the use of unquoted
| ='s in shells that to be forced quote them is a truly annoying bug.

 I would rather be annoyed periodically than (unpleasantly) surprised.
I fear that the current '=' hack is likely to deliver a fair amount of
the latter.

	- cks