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From:	culliton@srg.af.mil (Tom Culliton x2278)
X-Mailer: SCO System V Mail (version 3.2)
To:	rc@hawkwind.utcs.toronto.edu
Subject: Re: Thoughts on a builtin read
Date:	Tue, 21 Sep 1993 11:54:45 -0400
Message-Id: <9309211154.aa16146@ceres.srg.af.mil>

Oh, where to start....

Rich is right about the patch for nalloc.c, his version is better style.

For Malte, simplicity is often the same as usability, it takes a lot
fewer brain cells to remember and correctly use something simple vs.
something complex.  Maybe I'm just getting old, but I find myself
running low on brain cells pretty regularly these days.  What really
convinced me that rc's read should be simple was looking at the one in
ksh.  What a monstrosity! 8-P

The other idea that Malte mentioned, having read act like line, does
have a certain appeal.  It's may even be cleaner because it doesn't add
another way of setting variables.  And as Alan points out, a simple
function can easily convert one form to the other.  The only problem is
that you always need a `{} and thus an extra fork to do anything with
it.  

For Chris, if you don't care about setting a different ifs, you can 
split the line without a fork by using eval:
	read x;eval 'x=('$x')'
Of course if you want to split up the fields of /etc/passwd on ':'
you'll still need to fork.  Producing your own version of read, that
splits the input line using ifs, should be easy if you generalize the
backquote code in glom.c.  Go for it! ;-)

Finally, Alan has given me the go ahead to repost his version of read as
a patch.  The current version doesn't support readline yet, so maybe
I'll try to hack that in after lunch.

Tom