Re: feature to remove: free carets

[haahr@mv.us.adobe.com (Paul Haahr)]

i'm opposed to removing free carets.  when writing scripts, i make a lot
(but far from all) of my carets explicit, but on the command line i just
type things and the carets work.  i'd hate to see (for example) things
like
	$f/AGaramond/Regular/font.ps
	$i.c
	../es-0.83/$i
stop working.  i use a free caret in 50% of the uses of $ in my $history
file, based on my skipping around.

if you want to see what es is like without free carets, change the
#define of InsertFreeCaret() in token.c to a no-op and try it for
a while.  see if you really use the free carets as infrequently as
you think you do.

(to be more specific, change the definition to
	#define	InsertFreeCaret()	NOP
at roughly line 21 of token.c)

i'm willing to seriously participate in a discussion on the topic of
removing free careting from es (with the above stated opposition, though
i am flexible:  i did change my position on cdpath, for example), but
i will only pay attention to opinions from people who use *as their
interactive shell* the hacked version of es described above for a week
before they say anything.

paul