Newsgroups: comp.archives
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!ox.com!emv
From: byron@archone.tamu.edu (Byron Rakitzis)
Subject: [comp.arch] rc & quoting [was Re: Globbing ]
Message-ID: <1991Mar1.220944.9127@ox.com>
Followup-To: comp.arch
Sender: emv@ox.com (Edward Vielmetti)
Reply-To: byron@archone.tamu.edu (Byron Rakitzis)
Organization: College of Architecture, Texas A&M University.
References: <19336@cbmvax.commodore.com> <43994@cos.com> <1991Feb28.225426.24072@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> <12891@helios.TAMU.EDU>
Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1991 22:09:44 GMT
Approved: emv@ox.com (Edward Vielmetti)
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Archive-name: unix/shell/rc/1991-03-01
Archive-directory: archone.tamu.edu:/pub/rc/ [128.194.5.240]
Original-posting-by: byron@archone.tamu.edu (Byron Rakitzis)
Original-subject: rc & quoting [was Re: Globbing ]
Reposted-by: emv@ox.com (Edward Vielmetti)

In article <1991Feb28.225426.24072@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> cks@hawkwind.utcs.toronto.edu (Chris Siebenmann) writ
es:
>
> My general observation is that quoting is a hard problem, and that the
>fewer things you have to quote and in the fewer places, the better. For
>all its worts, the Unix shell (and especially rc, the Plan 9/V10 shell)
>have simple globbing quoting that you only have to do rarely.
>

I would just like to "remind" the net that I am presently putting the
finishing touches on my own implementation of "rc", the att plan 9 shell.

You can fetch a copy from archone.tamu.edu, by anonymous ftp, in pub/rc.
rc is about to be dignified with a version number, 0.9, but it needs users
to shake the bugs out. When I am sure it is relatively stable, I will release
version 1.0. (Lest I scare anyone off, I should mention that rc has been my
login shell for the last two months with nary a core dump.)

By the way, quoting in rc is accomplished as follows: surround the word
to be quoted in single quotes. That's it. There is no backslash quoting
and there is no double-quote quoting. It *does* make life a lot simpler.