Re: shell-expand-line drops quotation marks

[Chet Ramey]

On 11/4/15 1:48 PM, Keith Thompson wrote:
> Thanks, I didn't know about history-expand-line.
> 
> Is there some case where shell-expand-line would actually be useful?
> If I've typed *"foo bar"*, I can't think of any case where I'd *want*
> it to be replaced by *foo bar*, which has a very different meaning.
> Of course the obvious answer is not to use it, but I'm wondering why
> it's there.

Sure, when you want to expand aliases or variables in the command before
executing it.  It's only the quote removal that you -- in this case --
don't want.  You can also undo the word expansions after viewing them,
restoring the quoted strings.

There are separate bindable commands for history expansion, alias
expansion, and history-and-alias expansion.  If you don't want the
rest of the word expansions, you can easily rebind the commands.

Chet
-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
                 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, ITS, CWRU    chet@case.edu    http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/~chet/