As I read it, rob seems to disagree with you: > # file names were just a hack to get started - literally to get started. They were a place holder until a better idea came along. None has. > > # was never considered a great idea; I just needed some way to name an unnamed resource. I deliberately chose # as the character because it's the comment character in the shell and therefore is really irritating to use.
http://9fans.net/archive/2003/02/832 Still, clearly to this day nobody has come up with a fully satisfactory design to replace #, and certainly not an implementation of any such design. Seems that despite the many years of thinking, this is still a tricky problem, and # has turned out to be 'good enough' to keep any alternative from appearing. Peace uriel On Sun, Jan 4, 2009 at 12:41 PM, <lu...@proxima.alt.za> wrote: >> No one has yet offered a working, cleaner idea. > > I think it is a working, perfectly clean idea, myself. It's a > namespace of its own and there are only a very few inconsistencies > within it, well justified by the very nature of the namespace. That > minor nits such as #s and #| being a bit off the paradigm apply > suggests that some aspects could be given more thought, but they do > not invalidate the usefulness and consistency of the design. Rather, > they show a surprising maturity for something that probably did not > get too many iterations. > > ++L > > >
