Re: <> redirection and notations

[Steven M Rezsutek <steve@baloo.gsfc.nasa.gov>]

Gentlebeings,

The discussion on this subject has been quite overwhelming [at least
to me], but I'd like to put my 0.02 non-denominationa-monetary-units
in nonetheless...  

[Don't worry, I'm prepared for the ensuing "beating down" :-)]

On the subject of <> for read-write, I have to remain silent.  I my
self have yet to run into this need.  However it does have a "logic"
to it that I like.  The logic of the sugar-table that Alan(?) proposed
seems good to me.  (This amounts to nothing more than a word of support,
I suppose).

- Sugar	Meaning		Function	Implementation
- -----	-------		--------	--------------
- <	open ro		%open-ro	@{ %open r $* }
- >	open wo		%open-wo	@{ %open w $* }
- >>	open append	%open-app	@{ %open a $* }
- <>	open rw		%open-rw	@{ %open r+ $* }
- <>!	open rw+trun	%open-rw-trunc	@{ %open w+ $* }
- <>>	open rw+app	%open-rw-app	@{ %open a+ $* }

At to the replacement for <>{},  I also liked the suggstion of ::.
Why?  Well, I've just started to learn ML, and :: is the list "cons"
operator in that language... so, it's easy enough to think of this 
"operator" consing the result of evaluating {...} into a "hidden"
list of values.

[BTW, ML uses ^ as it's string "cons"... deja-vu? ]

Perhaps it's just me, but I've already trained myself to think of
anything with a % as someting I normally wouldn't fool with without
a lot of forethought (i.e. it represents something "system-oid").

Ok, I've said too much already.  Tear me up...


Steve