Re: [Nmh-workers] [PATCH] scan message numbers from stdin

[Peter Maydell]

Robert Elz wrote:
>I'm not sure this is a great idea.

I'm not quite that negative about it, but...

>Fairly trivially, as documented in the proposed manual update, it
>implies that
>
>       echo 1 2 3 4 5 | scan -
>
>would be the same as
>
>       scan 1 2 3 4 5
>
>but that isn't what the implementation does.

...I do think that this isn't a good idea.

I think that it would be nice if 'scan 4 1 2' actually output the messages
in the order stated on the command line. I also think that it would be
better if all programs accepting multiple messages allowed you to specify
'-' to read from standard input -- why should 'scan' in particular be
special?

(Extra bonus UI question: if we make scan process messages in the order
stated rather than always sorted order, what should 'scan sequencename'
do if the sequence as defined in the .mh_sequences file isn't in order?)

So I guess I like the idea but not the implementation.

-- PMM