Re: [PATCH] Clarify documentation of parameter-assignment behaviour

[Bart Schaefer <schaefer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

We need to come to some sort of decision on what we're accomplishing
in the zsh doc.

Historical context:  Zsh was originally conceived as a way to migrate
csh (later tcsh) users to a shell with a more well-defined syntax
based on Bourne shell syntax.  So originally the documentation assumed
you knew how to use csh and the doc was mostly concerned with how zsh
differed from that, not how shells work in general.  Then it began to
pick up features derived from reading the ksh documentation (because
ksh itself was still closed-source and not freely available) so those
had to be explained, too.  Then as people began to migrate to zsh from
bash and ksh, the doc had to explain how zsh differed from those
(which revealed a whole lot of mis-interpretation of the ksh doc when
trying to copy ksh functionality).  Through all of this the underlying
assumption was the reader had some shell background, and the zsh doc
only had to explain how zsh was special.

Now we're getting people who complain that the zsh doc doesn't cover
all that previously-assumed background.  As Peter said, "One of our
big problems is people finding the existing documentation too thick to
get through.  We can go on making it wordier and harder to get through
till the cows come home and it still won't make it a basic shell
primer."

Splitting doesn't happen on scalar assignment in any shell.  It would
break the prefix-assignment syntax (var=$value command args...) among
other things.  So this isn't a way in which zsh differs.

There's little point in not applying this patch now that it's written,
but it's philosophically similar to Sebastian's code patch that
optimizes something the compiler ought to be able to optimize, and
we're going to be up to our rafters in cows if we don't start leaving
some of them out in the pasture.