[openbox] ~me versus /home/meme

Anthony Thyssen A.Thyssen at griffith.edu.au
Tue Aug 25 07:52:01 EDT 2009


On 25 Aug 2009 10:13:56 +0200
Johan Vromans <jvromans at squirrel.nl> wrote:

| Mikael Magnusson <mikachu at gmail.com> writes:
| 
| > >  myapp --config=~/.appconfig
| > 
| > Since that doesn't even work in bash, I think I'm okay.
| 
| The point I wanted to make is that whatever you do, there's always
| something that may break.
| 
| Personally, I think that tilde expansion is meaningfull in interactive
| context and should not be used in scripts and files, since there's a
| better and more general mechanism available: $HOME.
| 
| Aside: The same goes for filename expansion and option abbreviations.
| 
Which only replaces tilde expansion for variable substitution, which
also means things like word separation (EG: ${HOME} ) and backslashing.

The fix is simple and very well known...

Have the shell parse and execute all executable strings.  Then you get
tilde expansion (if the 'shell' selected allows), variable substitutions,
and also full shell scripting.

What does OpenBox have to do!  A lot less than it is doing now!
No tilde handling, no argument parsing.  Just feed it to the shell.

It is a common solution, very well known, easily documented, and adds
a lot of extra flexibility that is currently not present.  Users can
even decide on the shell they want to handle the execution!



  Anthony Thyssen ( System Programmer )    <A.Thyssen at griffith.edu.au>
 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
   There is no point in being grown up,
      if you can't be childish, sometimes.       -- Doctor Who,  "Robot"
 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
     Anthony's Home is his Castle     http://www.cit.gu.edu.au/~anthony/


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