Hi Bill, > > Then name+n is the nth message of name; name_n is the nth to last > > message of name.(1 based ordinals. That is, name+1 is the first > > message of name and name_1 is the last message of name). > > Hey Norm, how is this useful? I can't see anyone manually referring to > the nth item in a sequence on the command line. The point of a > sequence is that you don't have to know the constituents. Maybe you > have a use case.
Many times an hour I do `-sub foo' or something else, e.g. -from, where ~/bin/-sub does a pick and scan, and then spot the one I'm interested in is the third from the top and do `s 3141', with ~/bin/s being show. I'd much rather do `s lp+3' as my muscles' memory is adept at `s lp' already and the `+' followed by the, typically single, digit would come quickly. Note, I don't have to count to know it's the third, I just know, just as old-time vi(1) users know it's 7dd that's needed at a glance. Given it may be easier to see it's five from the end an `s lp_5' mechanism is required. IIRC, `foo-bar' isn't valid for sequence names, even if foo and bar are both single-message sequences? If so, it would seem `-' is available for `foo-5'. I can see that could be confusing though. As a dc(1) user, I'm happy with `_'. `~' suggests something more fuzzy and approximate to me, e.g. awk's regexp matching operator, so would perhaps be better suited to some other use in the future. Cheers, Ralph. _______________________________________________ Nmh-workers mailing list [email protected] https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers
