Re: About `M-C-e` expand result `'` failed

[Chet Ramey]

On 2/3/24 7:44 AM, Martin D Kealey wrote:
> On Wed, 31 Jan 2024 at 01:04, Andreas Schwab <schwab@suse.de> wrote:
>
> > On Jan 30 2024, Zachary Santer wrote:
> > > There's no way this is the intended behavior, right?
> >
> > The command is doing exactly what it is documented to do, that is do all
> > of the shell word expansions.
>
> If that's how the documentation is interpreted, then clearly there's a bug
> in the documentation, because this is almost never *useful* behaviour.
>
> It actually says:
>
> > shell-expand-line (M-C-e) ... This performs alias and history expansion
> as well as all of the shell word expansions.
>
> It does *not* say that it does quote removal.

So your position is that quote removal is not one of the shell word
expansions?

> It could be argued that quote removal is implicitly required for some of
> the steps to proceed, but in that case it can equally be argued that such
> removal must therefore be reversed afterwards.

If you want to undo the word expansions, use the readline undo command
(C-_ in emacs mode). You'll get an idea of what the shell will do with
the command, and your command as you entered it will be restored.


> By all means, add a "strip-quotes" command to readline, so the user can use
> in the exceptional cases where you want to diverge from what the shell
> would have done without M-C-e,

The result is exactly what the shell would have done when it expanded the
command.


> but by default any expansion or substitution
> that's triggered by a readline command should render a result that's immune
> to that same expansion being done again when the user hits enter.

By all means, advocate for a quote-words readline command.

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