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

[Ben Abbott]

On Apr 27, 2012, at 9:01 AM, Mike Miller wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 10:32 AM, Ben Abbott <address@hidden> wrote:
>> 
>> 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.
> 
> Ben, so back to HOME, are you now in favor of keeping it around but
> making the default be pwd?
> 
> I now see all the ways ~/octave is broken (see below), I'm in favor of
> taking it out completely, if you agree I can push the above changeset
> that I haven't heard any problems with yet.
> 
> If you want to keep HOME but default it to pwd, this can be done by
> making the default HOME=".", merging in something like this change (to
> make HOME work for editing new files)
> 
> http://octave.1599824.n4.nabble.com/attachment/4567672/0/edit-1.patch
> 
> and leaving the rest as is.  I think the help text should even talk
> about "current working directory" everywhere and then mention in the
> description of HOME that it can be overridden by setting this
> variable.
> 
> After testing this all different ways, I'm a convert to pwd, and I
> think it's more intuitive to a new user.  To make the default of
> ~/octave work, edit assumes a user has taken care of:
> 
>  * mkdir -p ~/octave
>  * addpath(("~/octave") in .octaverc
> 
> If not, things don't work right and it's not very clear why not.
> Neither of these needs to be done for pwd.

Mike,

Regarding "HOME", I used ".", so I'm ok either way, but ...

One of my first changesets touched on edit.m. My recollection was that some 
users (developers?) preferred that all octave's core m-files be opened in a 
specific location. My guess is that if you remove HOME, you'll get some 
complaints. I think changing the default to pwd() would be ok.

If we keep HOME, I think it makes sense to allow HOME to be set equal to a 
function handle.

        edit ("home", @pwd)

For that to work, I think the class type needs to be checked in edit.m so that 
the function_handle is evaluated at FUNCTION.HOME()

Ben