[openbox] problems with tilde characters in commands

Anthony Thyssen A.Thyssen at griffith.edu.au
Mon Apr 6 23:38:28 EDT 2009


On Mon, 6 Apr 2009 22:58:54 -0400
Dana Jansens <danakj at orodu.net> wrote:

| 2009/4/6 Anthony Thyssen <A.Thyssen at griffith.edu.au>:
| 
| > The question then comes down to: How fast can we get 'tilde expansion'
| > fixed in the "openbox" source?
| 
| Such hostility, it's amazing.
| 

I don't mean to be, and apologise if it came out that way.

This has been about the one item that has prevented my full switch over
from my old (early 1990) CTwm desktop (with gnome pannel) to OpenBox.
It is just frustrating that openbox when so overboard with tilde expandsion.

A better solution would have been to allow 'environment variable'
substitution or just pass the command to the shell like most other
programs and window managers do.  people generally understand the
shell and allows direct use of small scripts and multiple commands.


| > That is only do the expansion if not in quotes, and precessed by the
| > start of the line, or white space.
| 
| Allowing a quoted \~ which gets passed literally to the command,
| instead of being expanded, should be nice.
| 
A stop gap measure I would think.  Shells only expand 'tilde' when
it is the start of an argument.  If openbox does it it should follow
the same convention.


  Anthony Thyssen ( System Programmer )    <A.Thyssen at griffith.edu.au>
 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
   UNIX is the spawn of the devil,
       why he even has his deamons running the thing!    -- Anthony Thyssen
 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
     Anthony's Home is his Castle     http://www.cit.gu.edu.au/~anthony/


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