Re: uninvited members of associative array

[Pier Paolo Grassi <pierpaolog@gmail.com>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2499 bytes --]

it certainly is to be said that, even if the shell implements all the basic
programming constructs, it is meant for different objectives then those
that are targeted by the things one most commonly calls "programming
languages", and even among those there are many distinctions, so probably
it wouldn't be so easy to establish an exact definition that includes only
the "ideals" (whatever that means) programming languages and leaves
everything else out. That being said, I think that one should accept the
language for what it is and what is meant to be and do, and even if
something would be awesome if it was engineered with  hindsight (like array
expansion without empty string elision with a more same syntax, or by
default) it should be wise to understand what the language is or is not
before dipping too much one's arms and feets in it, reading the manual at
least a couple of times front to bottom, since someone has put the effort
to write it. At least I try to do it this way, I experiment a bit but then
I try to read everything I can before resorting to ask for help, it seems
only fair given that someone has to put aside whatever he is doing to
answer me.

Pier Paolo Grassi


Il giorno sab 17 dic 2022 alle ore 00:33 Ray Andrews <rayandrews@eastlink.ca>
ha scritto:

>
> On 2022-12-16 14:15, Bart Schaefer wrote:
> >
> > I'd appreciate a pointer to that definition, since apparently my PhD
> > in Computer Science is from too long ago to have covered it.
>
> Ha!  Sometimes hairs need to be split, and Dominik is surely correct
> that zsh and say C are very different, but to say that zsh isn't a
> programing language will be a chore to sustain.
>
> Daniel:
>
> > You mean that you wrote foo[bar] and didn't realize that was
> > a globbing syntax too?  zsh can't disable features because you don't
> > know them.
>
> This stuff is all so fundamental that it couldn't change even if
> everyone wanted it to.  Disable isn't the word I chose.  But there is
> something very unfriendly about situations where you're doing something
> with an array index -- and it obvious at least to oneself that this is a
> string thing, and then zsh zealously applies filename expansions to it
> when it has nothing whatsoever to do with files.  I don't mind being
> clobbered, that's part of learning the shell, still it isn't very
> intuitive.  Anyway I've learned the protections.   But one can want to
> do some string globbing and still hope not to have anything to do with
> filenames.
>
>
>
>

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 3214 bytes --]