Re: Differences between Duff's rc and Byron's

[culliton@srg.af.mil (Tom Culliton x2278)]

Paul Hahr writes:

> > - $" vs. $^
> > > This seems like an arbitrary difference.
> Byron's $^ preceeded td's $".  if you look at older versions of the
> bell labs rc man page, it's not there.

I seemed to remember something like this and wondered why Duff did it
different.
 
> > - pattern matching, word vs. list
> > > This fixes something noted as a bug in the Plan 9 man page.
> i don't know what you mean by this comment.  i don't think Byron's
> ~ operator is any different from td's.

The Plan 9 man pages say "~ subject pattern ..." where subject is
singular (Duff's paper says "a string") and under BUGS the Plan 9 man
page says "There should be a way to match patterns against whole lists
rather than just single strings."  Byron allows subject to be a list.

I also forgot one we discussed before, functions that look like path
names, i.e. "fn /bin/csh { echo 'you''ve got to be kidding!' }" are
allowed in Duff's rc.  There are probably more minor differences like
this that got missed.

Tom