Re: edit.m: use current working directory, remove HOME

[Ben Abbott]

On Apr 24, 2012, at 9:47 AM, Mike Miller wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 8:58 AM, Ben Abbott <address@hidden> wrote:
>> On Apr 22, 2012, at 5:49 PM, Mike Miller wrote:
>> 
>>> I have prepared a new patch to make the edit command consistent wrt
>>> where files are edited, please take a look at the attached and tell me
>>> what you think.  The HOME variable is now no longer needed, a warning is
>>> issued if the user tries to get or set HOME.  The current directory is
>>> now used wherever HOME was used before, primarily when editing a system
>>> m-file with no write privileges.
>>> 
>>> --
>>> mike
>>> <edit-home.patch>
>> 
>> I had a thought. Would it be preferred to allow the HOME variable in edit.m 
>> to be set to a function handle, or a string. That would accommodate both 
>> those who prefer
>> 
>>        address@hidden
>> 
>> ... or ...
>> 
>>        HOME="~/octave";
> 
> Sure, I don't have a problem with supporting function handles in
> principle, but isn't address@hidden effectively overkill for HOME="."?

Ok.

>> Might the same be done for EDITOR ?
>> 
>>        address@hidden;
>> 
>> ... or ...
>> 
>>        EDITOR="gvim";
> 
> If EDITOR could be a function handle, it should probably take the name
> of the file to edit as its argument, right?  That would be analogous
> to the "%s" placeholder that the EDITOR setting currently requires.
> In that case the the EDITOR() function wouldn't work, but a new
> function could be made to be the default using @EDITOR.

I'm not sure I'm following.

Are you proposing a rewrite of the EDITOR function ?

How would it interact with edit.m and the built-in edit_history() ?

Ben