On 2022-12-17 04:47, Pier Paolo Grassi wrote:
> 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,

I agree.  One should know what to expect and what is possible. But one's 
understanding of these things comes from banging up against the 
limitations.  My criticisms are not meant to be in a negative frame of 
mind, I'm just given to speculation on what might be improved, and often 
I'm not even correct.


> 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.

I will experiment and read and Google for many hours before asking a 
question.


>
> 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.
>
>
>