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Re: Expanding quotes

On 24/12/13 08:24 AM, Yuri D'Elia wrote:

On 12/24/2013 04:12 PM, Ray Andrews wrote:

file name   .................. two identifiers so ...
"file name" .................. is the filename  ... << file name >> or
are the double quotes include in the filename so that the filename is
....  << "file name" >> ?

Madness!

Granted I'm still a relative beginner, but it seems to me that the
syntax of zsh (all sh*) is already vastly over complicated, even
Byzantine.  As more and more special situations are handled, the code
must mushroom into an intractable mess, and actually create more
problems than it solves.  Better IMHO not to even try.

Quoting is invariably part of any language construct.

Of course.

It's really important, especially as a beginner, to understand quoting
right from the start as a "normal event", not as an exception.

Of course.

Restricting the allowed characters of a file in the file system will not
remove quoting issues of a variable's value (for example).

To wrap your mind against it, you might see quoting as a problem for the
interpreter to *separate arguments* and not to interpret data. That is,
if we could choose # as an argument separator, we could have any
character in the file name except #. It just so happens that it's
/usually/ more readable to type:
That's just the point: There must be reserved characters, and it seems to me that quotation marks are first on that list. Also, as a policy, I prefer simplicity with some resulting limitations on what can be done, over complicated efforts to do 'anything'. It's just as Bart said, some issues are better left 'unsolved'. The solution could be worse than the problem. I think back to my DOS days, where almost all of the 'special' characters were reserved--it sure made things simpler. 
$ command argument "a value"

then

$ command#argument#a value

Just my 2c.
And mine ;-) I come at this, not as a zsh expert, but as a guy who knows something about information theory. Noam Chomsky would have something to say about this sort of issue.
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