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From:	smd@clock.org
To:	rc@hawkwind.utcs.toronto.edu
Subject: Re: New rc snapshot, includes "the equals hack"
Message-Id: <20000815133234Z3021-8597+4@cesium.clock.org>
Date:	Tue, 15 Aug 2000 09:32:30 -0500


Maybe I'm a bit of a crank, but I think for scripting work,
the "equals hack" really doesn't buy much; the only time I 
even ponder it is when I am doing interactive work and forget
that "arguments containing special characters must be quoted".

Although I know that dd, make, and some GNU utilities like
arguments which contain one of rc's special characters, and
this can be frustrating if one forgets, I don't see why we
should necessarily have:

	: sean(rc) ; echo foo=a
	foo=a

but

	: sean(rc) ; echo foo^a
	fooa
	: sean(rc) ; echo foo&a
	12978
        a not found
	foo
	: sean(rc) ; echo foo;a
	foo
	a not found
	: sean(rc) ; echo foo$a
	foo

and so forth.    One of the neat things about rc is that there
are few syntactic surprises; I think a rule that says "quote your arguments"
and especially "arguments with special characters MUST be quoted" is
consistent.

	Sean.