I agree with taking it out.
void
On Thu, 30 Jan 2003, Chip Norkus wrote:
>
> Hi folks. I've been quiet for a while, life and all that. However, I've
> bumped into something that has been a bit of a sore spot for a while.
> Automatic command completion in scripts. I'd, personally, like to see it
> banished from the face of the earth.
>
> If you're not familiar with the feature, it's the feature that turns "/ali"
> into "/alias" (as long as no other aliases/commands start with 'ali').
>
> Before anyone gets too excited, I don't mean for command completion to go
> away *on the command line*. That's a useful feature, and one which I think
> should stay. What I'm talking about relates purely to the execution of
> aliases in scripts.
>
> The problem, as I see it, is twofold:
> #1: I think there are substantial speed benefits to be gained by removing
> this code. It will obviate the need for sorting, and will make the use of
> hash-based lookups trivial.
> #2: I think epic is violating POLA (principle of least astonishment) by
> doing this at all. Imagine the case of a program who does the following:
>
> alias ali {
> echo auto litigation system enabled
> # ...
> }
>
> ali ...
>
> Now imagine if they accidently mis-type 'ali' (say, as 'alli') and execute
> their script. One would *expect* that doing "ali ..." will result in a
> "command not found" error. That's not the result, however. Assuming an
> otherwise clean running area, the user's script will actually execute the
> alias command with the given arguments.
>
> So what I'd like to do here is find out what people think of this proposal.
> Of especial interest is the response from scripters about whether this is
> good, bad, or neither, and also whether their scripts need any work for
> this to be done. Basically, does anyone actually want this behavior to
> remain, and if you do, can you explain why?
>
> If nobody actually wants to keep this, I would propose that as part of my
> namespace work it be removed and, either then or at a later date, a new
> lookup system for aliases/assigns be introduced.
>
> -wd
>
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