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From: cseaman@sequent.UUCP (Chris "The Bartman" Seaman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: How to improve Workbench 2.0!
Message-ID: <54303@sequent.UUCP>
Date: 1 Mar 91 20:33:35 GMT
References: <9474@uwm.edu> <8659@gollum.twg.com> <1991Feb23.203358.27835@sat.com> <1991Feb28.132253.8993@sugar.hackercorp.com>
Organization: Sequent Computer Systems, Beaverton, OR
Lines: 44

peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
< farren@sat.com (Michael J. Farren) writes:
< > 2. Does it start with the UNIX standard "#! <filename>" comment line?
< >    If so, execute <filename> <this script as argument>.  If anything
< >    goes wrong, abort.
< 
< What do you do about programs that interpret scripts, but use something
< other than "#" for a comment leadin? That's the point... AREXX is already
< an exception to this, and there will undoubtedly be others. Why not define
< things more generally in the first place:
< 
< 	1. If the script contains "#!text anwhere in the first line, possibly
< 	   terminated with "!#", then the text and path to this file is
< 	   prepended to the command line and it is reparsed.
< 
< So you can handle FrobProc scripts (that use the ADA convention), SuperShell
< scripts (that follow the Shell comment convention) and so on...
< 
< -- #!frobproc
< ; #!supershell
< /* #!AREXX!# */
< ...

Wouldn't it be better to enforce a rule that the "!<filename>[!]" MUST
immediately follow the leading comment character(s)?  Also, it seems
unnecessary to keep the "#" as part of the requirement.  Simply do it
as follows:

--!frobproc
;!supershell
/*!AREXX! */

After all, even under the UNIX convention, the "#" is only there because it
is the accepted comment character for the shell.  It's the "!<filename>"
that is important.

Regards,
Chris

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