Re: [PATCH 3/3] Documentation for named references

[Bart Schaefer <schaefer@brasslantern.com>]

On Tue, Feb 7, 2023 at 2:52 AM Daniel Shahaf <d.s@daniel.shahaf.name> wrote:
>
> Bart Schaefer wrote on Mon, Feb 06, 2023 at 19:25:03 -0800:
> > On Mon, Feb 6, 2023 at 4:57 PM Daniel Shahaf <d.s@daniel.shahaf.name> wrote:
> > >
> > > Bart Schaefer wrote on Sun, Feb 05, 2023 at 18:26:50 -0800:
> >
> > > > +When both a named reference and the `tt((P))' flag appear, the named
> > > > +reference is resolved before `tt((P))' is applied.
> > >
> > > Add a test for this last sentence?
> >
> > I can't think of a way to do so.  Given ${(P)ptr}, there are two possibilities:
> > 1) ptr is a scalar, in which case we're not testing the right thing
> > 2) ptr is a reference, so any other order of expansion is meaningless
> >
>
> I'm not sure I follow what would be "meaningless" here.

${(P)name} is defined to expand $name and then treat the string value
as a further parameter name.  What would it mean to expand a named
reference without resolving it?  Just ignore that it's a named
reference and treat it as a scalar?

(Skipping suggested test cases, I'll add them just for completeness)

> > If ptr is a reference, a working test of ${ptr} implies that ${(P)ptr}
> > also works. [...]
>
> That doesn't seem to be the case in the following:
>
> % ary=( 'bry[1]' 'bry[2]' )
> % bry=( lorem ipsum )
> % typeset -n nr='ary[2]'
> % echo $nr
> bry[2]
> % echo ${(P)nr}
> zsh: bad substitution

That doesn't have to do specifically with (P), it's the same error as this:

> % ary=( foo bar )
> % typeset -n nr='ary[2]'
> % echo ${nr}
> zsh: bad substitution

That'll have to be looked at.

> > > s/Local Parameters/Named References/
> >
> > Thanks, thought I'd caught all of those ... it was nice when the older
> > version of yodl complained about those incorrect references.
>
> The yodl macro is a thin wrapper around the texinfo macro.  Perhaps
> texinfo warns about this somewhere in its output?

I'm grumbling about the wrong thing, it's actually "makeinfo" that
used to complain but doesn't in newer versions of texinfo.