From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Received: from central.cis.upenn.edu ([130.91.6.1]) by archone.tamu.edu with SMTP id <22543>; Mon, 1 Jul 1991 16:04:45 -0500
Received: from SAUL.CIS.UPENN.EDU by central.cis.upenn.edu
	id AA12435; Mon, 1 Jul 91 17:04:32 -0400
Return-Path: <mjd@saul.cis.upenn.edu>
Received: from LOCALHOST by saul.cis.upenn.edu
	id AA01620; Mon, 1 Jul 91 17:04:31 EDT
Posted-Date: Mon, 01 Jul 91 17:04:31 -0400
Message-Id: <9107012104.AA01620@saul.cis.upenn.edu>
To: rc@archone.tamu.edu
Cc: mjd@saul.cis.upenn.edu
Subject: Re: f.c. 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 01 Jul 91 14:04:57 CDT."
             <91Jul1.140500cdt.22543@archone.tamu.edu> 
Date: Mon, 1 Jul 1991 16:04:31 -0500
From: Mark-Jason Dominus <mjd@saul.cis.upenn.edu>


> 1) I don't want to add a new feature to rc unless someone cannot do
> what they need to do without it.

For several weeks, I have been debating whether or not to ask for a
`...' feature.  I have always refrained.  It was not much work to code
up a version of `seq' and use that, and I find that it works well
enough.  

There are exactly two things I like about rc:

	1.  It is very fast.

	2.  The syntax is very simple.

The rest I can take or leave, but these two qualities were enough to
convince me to switch shells and redo all my .alias and ...rc files.
Until rc, I had never used a shell in which it was obvious how to quote
any given construction.  Today I catted a file called
Frequently_Asked_Questions_about_Unix_-_with_Answers_[Monthly_posting]
and I did not have to worry about metacharacters.  I can type a
multiline awk script on the command line and not worry about the shell
interpreting my awk script.  This is a big deal for me.  Even with sh, I
found that it was difficult to predict just how a certain construct
might be evaluated.  rc does the same thing every time.

I think it would be a shame to see these two qualities go away.  Putting
a `seq' or `...' operator into the language might be convenient, but it
wouldn't be much more convenient than using an external `seq'.  I would
rather spend my `very fast' advantage on exec'ing external programs than
mess up the neat syntax.