bug#59960: 30.0.50; Eshell's $* variable (used to define aliases) doesn't work as expected

[Jim Porter]

On 12/11/2022 12:04 AM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> AFAICT, the fact that $* produces a sub-list is not mentioned in the
> documentation part of the patch.  I think it should, if only to
> explain why a special expansion is needed.

Ok, I've expanded the documentation here to (hopefully) make things 
clearer. I've also added support for a wider variety of places where the 
splice operator works. In addition to simple scenarios like this:

  ~ $ setq var (list 1 2 3)
  ~ $ echo var is $var
  ("var" "is"
   (1 2 3))
  ~ $ echo var is $@var
  ("var" "is" 1 2 3)

You can now use it inside double-quotes:

  ~ $ echo "var is $var"
  var is (1 2 3)
  ~ $ echo "var is $@var"
  var is 1 2 3

The general rule is that "$@var" should work as though you typed 
"$var[0] $var[1] ... $var[N]". That means this works too:

  ~ $ echo var is A$@var
  ("var" "is" "A1" 2 3)

(This last one probably isn't very practical, but it obeys the general 
rule I mentioned above.)

I'm sure there are other places the splice operator might be nice to 
have (e.g. for loops), but the above covers common places this might get 
used, and it shouldn't be too difficult to add support in other places 
if there's demand.

0001-Support-completion-of-variables-with-the-length-oper.patch
Description: Text document

0002-Add-support-for-the-splice-operator-in-Eshell.patch
Description: Text document

0003-Rename-eshell-flatten-args-token-to-eshell-splice-im.patch
Description: Text document