Re: path PATH

[Ray Andrews <rayandrews@eastlink.ca>]

On 2023-01-22 04:29, Roman Perepelitsa wrote:
>
> Perhaps you can use something like this to describe parameters:
>
>      describe-param() {
>        emulate -L zsh
>        [[ ARGC -eq 1 && -n $1 ]] || return
>        set -- "$@" ${(Pt)1}
>        [[ -$2- == *-hide-* ]] && return 1
>        print -rn -- "$2 ${(q-)1}"
>        if [[ -$2- == *-hideval-* ]]; then
>          print
>        else
>          set -- "$@" ${(M)2:#(array|association)(|-*)}
>          print -r -- "=${3:+( }${(j: :)${(@qqq)${(@kv)${(@P)1}}}}${3:+ )}"
>        fi
>      }
>
Fantastic.  I've never seen parameter descriptions of that sort. So 
verbal, so helpful , so complete.  Whoever coded that was a friend of 
humanity that day:

5 /aWorking/Zsh/Source/Wk 0 $ describe-param PATH
scalar-tied-export-special 
PATH=".:/aWorking/Zsh/System:/aWorking/Bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin"

5 /aWorking/Zsh/Source/Wk 0 $ describe-param path
array-tied-special path=( "." "/aWorking/Zsh/System" "/aWorking/Bin" 
"/usr/local/bin" "/usr/sbin" "/usr/bin" )

... ALL the information, all the time.  I'll bet it even works on 
Tuesdays.  Dunno, it's mostly a psychological thing but whereas most of 
the time brief, compact information is all you need, it is nice to know 
that when you hafta, you can get ALL the information.  I learn that PATH 
is exported and path is not!  Who knew?  typeset -p obfuscates more than 
helps.  But, as Bart was saying, we can't export arrays (why not? it 
seems arbitrary), so that's what PATH is for.  Complete information 
explains itself. If I'd had that function from the getgo, this entire 
thread would have been unnecessary, the issue would have explained 
itself. It's going to be a good day.