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bug#54190: 29.0.50; [PATCH] Incorrect/missing documentation for some Esh
From: |
Jim Porter |
Subject: |
bug#54190: 29.0.50; [PATCH] Incorrect/missing documentation for some Eshell "$" syntaxes |
Date: |
Sun, 27 Feb 2022 13:34:26 -0800 |
In the documentation for lisp/eshell/esh-var.el (and
`eshell-parse-variable-ref' in that file), it says that "$<FOO>" is a
way of accessing the value of the variable FOO to disambiguate the
length of the variable name, sort of like "${FOO}" in ordinary shells.
However, that's not actually true. The correct syntax for that is:
$"FOO"
;; or...
$'FOO'
In fact, what "$<FOO>" does is to run FOO as a subcommand, writing its
stdout to a temp file, and returning that file's name. This is (very!)
subtly implied in the Eshell manual in the "Bugs and ideas" section,
where it says:
`grep python $<rpm -qa>' doesn't work, but using `*grep' does
This happens because the `grep' Lisp function returns immediately,
and then the asynchronous `grep' process expects to examine the
temporary file, which has since been deleted.
Attached is a patch which updates the documentation to correctly
describe the current behavior. Note: since this is just a documentation
change, it might be worth pushing to the 28 branch.
0001-Improve-correct-documentation-about-Eshell-variable-.patch
Description: Text document
- bug#54190: 29.0.50; [PATCH] Incorrect/missing documentation for some Eshell "$" syntaxes,
Jim Porter <=