Hi,
I was bitten the other day by
$ pick -list -sub foo last | cat; echo exit $?
pick: no messages match specification
0
exit 0
$
Namely, as described in pick(1)'s BUGS, if stdout isn't a tty then pick
lists the illegal message number 0 to cause errors to propogate, e.g.
through backticks back to rmm(1).
Effectively, I was doing
foo `pick ...` `pick ...` `pick ...`
and wanted picks that found nothing to silently disappear; my foo would
do the right thing with no arguments.
It occurred to me just now that we don't have a "none"; mh-sequence(5)
has "all" and Sequence-Negation but
$ pick notall
pick: bad message list notall
it seems Sequence-Negation doesn't apply to reserved word "all" and
$ pick -seq foo all && pick -seq bar notfoo
6003 hits
pick: sequence foo full
$
pick complains rather than effectively do
mark -seq bar -del all
if sequence bar already exists.
If there was a "none" to pair "all" then pick could -list it instead of
the illegal 0 and it wouldn't be an error that propogates but a
reasonable action, e.g. the same as `scan none'.
Anyone know why the "0" route was chosen at the time?
Cheers, Ralph.
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