Re: semicolon at beginning of line

[Elliott Forney]

Sure, a comment can be used to place a line in your history but that
doesn't really address the examples I had.  Just seems to me like a
lone semicolon could be treated as a newline/noop.  I can't seem to
think of anything that this would break but, of course, that doesn't
mean it wouldn't.  The end of a case in a switch statement is
certainly an interesting one, hadn't thought of that, but it should be
possible to handle that by checking for ;; as a token before ;.

I might mention that ksh, zsh and tcsh all allow lines to begin with a
semicolon.  zsh even allows "; ; ; echo hello world ; ; ;" although
ksh only allows a single ; at the beginning of a line.

On Sun, Apr 8, 2012 at 6:48 PM, Joseph Fredette <jfredett@gmail.com> wrote:
> Could also use a #, no?
>
> On Sun, Apr 8, 2012 at 8:46 PM, Steven W. Orr <steveo@syslang.net> wrote:
>
>> On 4/7/2012 4:00 PM, Elliott Forney wrote:
>>
>>> I wish bash would happily execute lines that begin with a semicolon,
>>> i.e., treat it as a no-op followed by a command.  The following
>>> examples come to mind:
>>>
>>> $ infloop&  echo hello
>>> [2] 11361
>>> hello
>>> $ infloop&; echo hello
>>> bash: syntax error near unexpected token `;'
>>>
>>> $ echo hello; echo world
>>> hello
>>> world
>>> $ echo hello;; echo world
>>> bash: syntax error near unexpected token `;;'
>>>
>>> $ ; echo hello world
>>> bash: syntax error near unexpected token `;'
>>>
>>> Any thoughts?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>   Elliott Forney
>>>
>>
>> Just use a colon.
>>
>> : echo Hello world.
>>
>> I use it all the time to 'park' a command in my history. Then when I'm
>> ready, I just back up to it and remove the colon.
>>
>>
>> --
>> Time flies like the wind. Fruit flies like a banana. Stranger things have
>>  .0.
>> happened but none stranger than this. Does your driver's license say Organ
>> ..0
>> Donor?Black holes are where God divided by zero. Listen to me! We are all-
>> 000
>> individuals! What if this weren't a hypothetical question?
>> steveo at syslang.net
>>
>>