Re: append to history entry?

[Ray Andrews <rayandrews@eastlink.ca>]

On 27/12/16 03:55 PM, Bart Schaefer wrote:
> That's what $'...' does, but you can't ask for a C string and for
> variable interpolation at the same time.  Well, you can, but it
> doesn't really help. ;-)
Indeed.  Be careful what you ask for ... I am expecting the variables to 
expand.
It's all  this backslash and 'is it one string or several strings' 
stuff.  Dunno ...
is that really different?  It just seems that the expansion of the 
variables is 'visible'
for lack of a better word -- you expect it, it's not a gotcha the way 
the rest is.
For me, the task is to see the 'naturalness' for lack of a better word 
of the way
that zsh does this:

     print -rS -- "rap ${${(q+)@}}; : ${(q-)HOST}"

... it seems that the backslashes need protecting and reprotecting and 
yet more
protecting and each stage of the protection is different from the last.  
Couldn't we just:

     setopt protect-backslashes-thanks
     print -S "rap $@; : $HOST"

... it's not that the backslashes are presumed special, it's that I'd 
say we should only have to
press one button once to literalise them.  Is it impossible that this 
could be simple and intuitive?
No ordinary mortal would know to do what you guys showed me, one must be 
shown and even
Bart and Daniel didn't get it exactly right the first time.  What hope 
do I have?

>
> Maybe this would be easier (in the "should have thought of this before"
> category):
>
>      print -s -f '%s' rap "$@" ";" ":" "$HOST"
>
> (Note this doesn't work with -S, which currently is silently ignored if
> the -f option is given, but as you already have all the words separated
> here there's no reason to re-parse them.)
>
I'll chew on that.