Re: address@hidden: Re: comint's directory tracking doesn't understand \( or \)]

[David Hansen]

On Mon, 05 Mar 2007 00:30:09 +0100 David Kastrup wrote:

> David Hansen <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> On Sun, 04 Mar 2007 14:26:30 -0500 Chong Yidong wrote:
>>
>>> I don't think we should make the proposed change to comint.el.  AFAIK,
>>> the detailed rules for how backslash escape works is, in principle,
>>> different from shell to shell, and even if we choose to obey (e.g.)
>>> bash semantics for backslash escapes, we might still be incompatible
>>> with other shells.
>>
>> It's an *sh* semantic, not bash.  Do you know of any non sh
>> compatible interactive shell that is widely used?
>
> csh and its ilk are actually in non-trivial use.  Their respective
> suckage level for interactive use appears tolerable for some people.
> One has to be aware that some interactive aids like history
> manipulation and command completion appeared first in that family, and
> some people were more comfortable with C-like syntax.

My csh man page isn't that clear about it but some simple tests
suggest that it treats the backslash like a sh.

BTW, we would be flooded with bug reports if the way my patch treats
backslashes would be harmful to any widely used shell (from
`shell-quote-argument'):

      ;; Quote everything except POSIX filename characters.
      ;; This should be safe enough even for really weird shells.


David