Re: compctl -g not working

[Bart Schaefer <schaefer@brasslantern.com>]

On Oct 4, 12:43am, Sweth Chandramouli wrote:
}
} > SH_GLOB <K> <S>
} >      Disables the special meaning of `(', `|', `)' and '<' for globbing
} >      the result of parameter and command substitutions, and in some
} >      other places where the shell accepts patterns.  This option is
} >      set by default if zsh is invoked as sh or ksh.
} > 
} > One of the "some other places" is in compctl expressions.
}
} (What are the odds of the manpage getting updated to note that "some
} other places" includes compctl -g, but not compctl -s, and the fact
} that BARE_GLOB_QUAL overrides KSH_GLOB?)

I don't think it'd be appropriate to mention compctl specifically in the
doc for SH_GLOB, but see below.

BARE_GLOB_QUAL overrides everything else having to do with paren tokens
when they appear at the end of words -- it actually works by parsing the
pattern "backwards" when the final character is a close-paren token --
and is (sometimes) defeated by SH_GLOB only because that prevents the
parens from ever being tokenized in the first place.

Which is how we get into the "some other places" situation.  The lexer
knows whether or not it is in parameter or command substitution and so
does not apply SH_GLOB to "ordinary" glob patterns.  However, strings
that are originally parsed as quoted and then later converted into a
glob pattern are (usually) not passed through the lexer again -- they
go through a different tokenizer that always applies SH_GLOB.

The reason that "some other places" does not include `compctl -s' is
because -s actually *does* pass the string through the lexer again,
whereas -g passes it only through the tokenizer.

So the questions (hey, zsh-workers) are:

Should we fix `compctl -g' so that it behaves like "ordinary" globbing?
(I have a suggested implementation that I won't go into here.)

Should we make BARE_GLOB_QUAL a bit smarter so that it knows about
KSH_GLOB and looks back one more character to see if what precedes the
open-paren token is one of the ksh-glob-chars?  (It already treats a
`|' inside the parens as indicative of a glob alternation rather than
a list of qualifiers.)

-- 
Bart Schaefer                                 Brass Lantern Enterprises
http://www.well.com/user/barts              http://www.brasslantern.com

Zsh: http://www.zsh.org | PHPerl Project: http://phperl.sourceforge.net