Re: `*' variable always local to functions

[friedman@gnu.ai.mit.edu (Noah Friedman)]

>uh, i'm not quite sure what you're talking about here.  the only thing about
>``*'' which is special is that if you have no other arguments to a lambda, it
>is used by default.  this was done so that
>	fn g { grep $* }
>would just work.  (cultural compatibility, rather than real compatibility.)

Yes, that is precisely what I'm talking about.

If I don't specify any arguments local to a function, I don't want any. 

I understand the desire to be culturally compatible with other shells, but
on the other hand I think that, with respect to es, it makes the shell's
treatment of variables less consistent. 

It also is a minor annoyance, because you might actually want to frob a
nonlocal `*' intentionally (it's occured to me once or twice).