Re: Source mangling in $functions_source and typeset -f

[Ray Andrews <rayandrews@eastlink.ca>]

On 2021-11-27 9:47 a.m., Bart Schaefer wrote:
>
> With the exception of the contents of strings (including
> here-documents), the original source of a function is not kept in
> shell memory.  Instead a parse tree is stored and used to regenerate
> the function definition by "typeset -f" et al.
That's most interesting, it seems circular so there must be a good 
reason for it, but why take the source as written, then parse it down to 
'clean code' and then construct whatever internal representations zsh 
uses and then reconstruct clean code from that when one could just 
repeat the first step?  Is it perhaps faster to perform the 3d step than 
repeat the first step?  But repeating the first step would surely 
preserve more?