Re: [Nmh-workers] The invisible mail folder

[Norman Shapiro]

Joel Reicher <address@hidden> writes:
>> Norm sayeth:
>> >NO. I'm not quite happy with that, in that I would prefer that
>> >
>> >    + foobar
>> >
>> >mean the same thing as +foobar. That way wild card expansion in shell script
>> s
>> >and file name completion in interactive shells would be much easier.
>>
>> No, MH semantics shuold be isolated from the shell's and foo + barFolder is
>> broken.
>
>I think those are two different issues that should not be conflated.
>
>I agree that MH semantics should not be compromised by shell semantics,
>but it isn't clear that anything in MH is being compromised by permitting
>"+ folder". Quite the reverse, in fact; having those semantics does not
>force their use, and is only going to make a (beneficial) difference
>to any who want them.
>
>The only problem I can see is if "+ somestring" had somestring being
>a sequence name (or message number), and the user actually wanted both
>the "+" to mean the folder root, and the "somestring" to mean a message
>spec. I think this is so unusual that it's not something we should cater
>to.

I would also argue that the +folderName syntax for designating a file name is
strange and unique to mh. If, at the time is was first conceived (by Bruce
Borden) I had thought it through and had I realized that decades later people
would still be using it, I would have vetoed it. Almost all other arguments
syntaxes for doing this either use the --something=fileName syntax and/or a pair
of arguments.


    Norman Shapiro
    798 Barron Avenue
    Palo Alto CA 94306-3109
    (650) 565-8215
    address@hidden