cshjunkieparen bothers me (and always has)

["Bart Schaefer" <schaefer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I realize we just hit 3.0-pre1, so this is probably a bad time to bring
this up, but ...

Cshjunkieparen got added sometime between 2.4.100 and 2.5.0.  Does anyone
remember WHY?  That is, I know why the option got added; I screamed about
it myself when the syntax it permits stopped working, so it got thrown in 
to shut me up.  But actually, the syntax I was really concerned about is

	if [[ ... ]] {
	    action
	}

which doesn't have anything at all to do with *parens*.

What I mean is, does anybody remember why you'd CARE whether that syntax
works or gives a syntax error?  The more csh-like syntax

	if ( ... ) then
	    action
	fi
or
	if [[ ... ]] then
	    action
	fi

works regardless of cshjunkieparen, and nobody ever complains about THAT,
so don't start throwing ksh compatibility around.

Furthermore, using { } as the body of an "if" isn't anything remotely like
csh, so the name of the option doesn't make any sense at all.  (If it also
enabled (and when unset, disabled) the above forms, then the name might be
slightly more sensible, but the necessity no less mystifying.)

So the only significant effect cshjunkieparen seems to have is that

	setopt cshjunkieparen
	if ( exec ... )
	...

blows away the current shell.  As this can hardly be considered desirable,
I'm having a really hard time figuring out why zsh can't simply support the
`if ( ... ) { ... }' and `if [[ ... ]] { ... }' syntax all the time, and
always have `( ... )' mean a subshell even with that syntax; and then get
rid of the cshjunkieparen option.

If ksh syntax is really the issue, then I suggest that the already-misnamed
noshortloops option be extended to prohibit the forms currently handled by
cshjunkieparen.  The syntactic shorthands are at least similar there.  (The
name of the option really should be `noshortbodies' as it isn't limited to
looping constructs.)

If we really wanted a cshjunkieparen that meant something useful, it would
mean that the parens were interpreted as [[ ... ]] like so:

	if ( $TERM == xterm ) then
	    ...
	fi

I certainly wouldn't object to that -- though you'd probably have to call
the option `cshjunkietests' now because cshjunkieparen is tainted.

I'm not suggesting that cshjunkietests be added to 3.0.0.  However, I *AM*
suggesting that cshjunkieparen be removed in favor of always supporting
the associated syntax.

-- 
Bart Schaefer                             Brass Lantern Enterprises
http://www.well.com/user/barts            http://www.nbn.com/people/lantern

New male in /home/schaefer:
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