Re: Defining commands to not evaluate certain metacharacters

[Philippe Troin <phil@xxxxxxxx>]

Bart Schaefer <schaefer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> On Dec 20,  5:38pm, Philippe Troin wrote:
> }
> } How hard would it be implementing a "noparse" precommand modifier?
> 
> What does "noparse" mean?  It's got to begin parsing before it can
> recognize a precommand modifier.  Even splitting into words at whitespace
> is parsing, of a sort.  
> 
> Do backslashes still work?  What about quotes of various flavors?  Care
> to predict every possible question of this kind that I might ask?

I have no clue how it would work. I've just said I felt the need for
such a thing at some point, namely while trying to avoid quoting when
using zmv.
 
> If there isn't _some_ syntax, you're just using "cat" as your shell; the
> input can't be processed in any useful way.
> 
> If you want to be able to define your own arbitrary syntax, you need a
> language-definition language (like a YACC grammar).  How hard would it
> be to implement that?

Let's not put yacc into zsh (yet).

Phil.