Path: ...!news.misty.com!weretis.net!feeder9.news.weretis.net!xmission!nnrp.xmission!.POSTED.shell.xmission.com!not-for-mail
From: gazelle@shell.xmission.com (Kenny McCormack)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell
Subject: Re: bash aesthetics question: special characters in reg exp in [[ ...
 =~~ ... ]]
Date: Tue, 23 Jul 2024 16:13:40 -0000 (UTC)
Organization: The official candy of the new Millennium
Message-ID: <v7okrk$3qkbf$1@news.xmission.com>
References: <v7mknf$3plab$1@news.xmission.com> <v7nu8t$15bon$1@dont-email.me> <v7o56b$3qeeq$1@news.xmission.com> <v7ofkl$18d66$1@dont-email.me>
Injection-Date: Tue, 23 Jul 2024 16:13:40 -0000 (UTC)
Injection-Info: news.xmission.com; posting-host="shell.xmission.com:166.70.8.4";
	logging-data="4018543"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@xmission.com"
X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test77 (Sep 1, 2010)
Originator: gazelle@shell.xmission.com (Kenny McCormack)
Bytes: 3082
Lines: 52

In article <v7ofkl$18d66$1@dont-email.me>,
Janis Papanagnou  <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> wrote:
>On 23.07.2024 13:46, Kenny McCormack wrote:
>> In article <v7nu8t$15bon$1@dont-email.me>,
>> Janis Papanagnou  <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> ...
>>> Both (ksh & zsh) seem to show "better aesthetics".
>> 
>> Indeed, it does.  That is how it should work.
>
>BTW, it's interesting that bash and zsh both reformat (sort
>of pretty-print) the code (when using 'typeset -f'), only
>that zsh keeps that literal '\n'. This may show a way (by
>zsh example) how to follow Kaz' suggestion of patching the
>bash. (But, frankly, I'm not sure it was meant seriously. (see ** below))

Yes.  ksh seems to dump it out literally as is (as it was typed), but bash
(and, I guess also zsh - I have zero knowledge or experience of zsh) pretty
prints it.  But it seems zsh does a prettier print than bash.

One thing that bash does that's annoying is puts semicolons on the end of
(almost) every line.  I have, on occasion, had to recover a function from
the bash pretty print (*), and one of the things that needs to be done is
to remove those extraneous semicolons.

(*) BTW, the command I use is "type".  I.e., "type funName" displays the
function definition of function funName.  That seems to be the same as your
use of "typeset".

>But ksh displays it as it had been typed in; a raw format.
>If you define your function, say, as multi-line code you
>also see it that way, there's no processing at that point
>(or the original retained as copy). I didn't expect that.

Yep.  Note also that bash reformats something like:

    cmd1 &&
      cmd2 &&
        cmd3

to:

    cmd1 && cmd2 && cmd3

which is annoying.

(**) I've hacked the bash source code for less.  So, yeah, it is possible.

-- 
The randomly chosen signature file that would have appeared here is more than 4
lines long.  As such, it violates one or more Usenet RFCs.  In order to remain
in compliance with said RFCs, the actual sig can be found at the following URL:
	http://user.xmission.com/~gazelle/Sigs/ThePublicGood