Re: final call: a replacement for <>{}

[Alan Watson <alan@oldp.astro.wisc.edu>]

No one else seemed to speak up strongly in favour of keeping %, so I
had rather resigned myself to losing it.  Besides, I have a cold so I'm
having problems spitting comets of any colour.

With that as a given, and since so few programs use % in their
arguments (I can only think of date and printf), we could use % in the
same way as ` (i.e., no braces would be required).  The names of the
primitives would have to be changed.

I would rather lose % as a function name, change the names of the
primitives, and keep identical restrictions on <> and `, than mess up
the syntax any further.

(Of course, I'd prefer to lose `foo and go with `{foo} and ${foo}, but
other people feel `foo has a very strong justification.)

Alan.

BTW, both the system variables and primitives in Phoenix, a
front-end to first MVT and then MVS developed and run at Cambridge
University, all began with %, so I don't have any bad associatons of %
with job control.