From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Received: from localhost by hawkwind.utcs.toronto.edu with SMTP id <2689>; Tue, 21 Sep 1993 13:02:10 -0400
To:	rc
Subject: Re: Thoughts on a builtin read 
In-reply-to: malte's message of Tue, 21 Sep 93 11:56:15 -0400.
             <9309211556.AA20736@dahlie.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de> 
Date:	Tue, 21 Sep 1993 13:02:04 -0400
From:	Chris Siebenmann <cks>
Message-Id: <93Sep21.130210edt.2689@hawkwind.utcs.toronto.edu>

 Malte brings up the desire for shift to shift things besides $*.
This has been thoroughly beaten to death in the mailing list; see my
message <91Sep11.132925edt.2708@hawkwind.utcs.toronto.edu>, which has
a supershift function which involves no backquotes and no risk of
carefully quoted variables 'escaping'.

 You can find it in the first mailing list archive on archone.tamu.edu,
/pub/rc/rc-list.1991.Z. I highly recommend reading the mailing list
archives; many issues have been discussed and summarized there.

	- cks
[to save people's time, here's the function again:
# 'supershift' function for rc.
# usage:
#	sshift varname
#	sshift varname number
# shifts the list varname by number (default 1) positions.
fn sshift { if (~ $#* 1 ) { _sshift $1 1 $$1 } else { _sshift $1 $2 $$1 } }

# this function does most of the work.
# _sshift NAME COUNT LISTELEMS
# shift LISTELEMS COUNT items left, and assign the result to NAME.
fn _sshift { _vn=() { _vn=$1; shift; shift $1; shift; $_vn=$* } }
]