Re: setopt interactivecomments

[Bart Schaefer <schaefer@brasslantern.com>]

On Apr 16,  1:37pm, shawn wilson wrote:
}
} So if I want to know what ideas are based on, I should refer to how
} FBSD tcsh and sh behave and not how Bash on Linux functions?

Zsh's been around for 20-ish years now, so the answer may depend upon
how long ago the feature was implemented.  In general, though, if you
find something that appears to be fundamentally different from the
way bash/ksh work, you should look to see if it instead mimics some
similar feature in tcsh.  Otherwise the reason is probably that zsh
invented it either first or in parallel and different choices were made
by the different developer teams.

} Or as far as this type of thing is concerned, it would stay either way
} because it was an original implementation decision?

That's not quite accurate.  Zsh has a number of "emulation modes" and
(to use the specific example in this thread) you'll find that if you
use "sh" emulation then interactivecomments is the default behavior.
If an emulation mode is found to diverge from its model, we'll make
reasonable efforts to bring it in line.  Sometimes (e.g. ksh namerefs)
that's difficult because of fundamental differences in the way certain
underlying functionality is implemented, but we'll do what we can.

Too bad Peter says he's gone quiet for a week, as I'd like his take on
this, but from my perspective:

In native mode, things that are obviously buggy will be changed, but
otherwise the criteria applied is along the lines of "what fraction
of existing real-world zsh init files / scripts / user idioms are
likely to break if we change this default?" compared with "how badly
does this inconvenience a newbie who's expecting something else?"  If
the (admittedly somewhat subjective) old-pain/new-pain ratio is too
high, the default will stay the way it is.