Greg Wooledge wrote: > On Tue, Jan 22, 2013 at 06:56:31AM -0500, Steven W. Orr wrote: > > By that logic, > > [...alternate possibility omitted...] > > So, in chronological order: > [...list of actions omitted...]
I think the take-away here is that the shell evolved to require 142 unique command line scanning actions (obviously I am greatly exagerating that number) in order to perform the complex task that it must perform. That is more steps than the human brain is casually comfortable remembering. As tired and sleepy humans our brains would like the number of actions to be no greater than 2 in order to easily hold it in our head. We stretch it to 3, to 4 to 5 but at some point we run out of fingers and the number might as well actually be 142. By the time we reach the number of steps that are really needed, what the shell does, it is too many and doesn't stick in our heads. Perhaps there is a one-sheet poster hint sheet with all of the shell command line scanning steps nicely illustrated that we could post on the wall so that we can glance up and refresh our memory of it when needed. Something like the [fill in your favorite programming language here] operator precedence table. (If you looked over at your copy next to you then you know what I am talking about.) Bob
