Re: feature todo .. be able to unset vars at assignment stage , without unset util , for coding language fair extendment

[Zachary Santer]

On Fri, Feb 23, 2024 at 12:12 PM Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> wrote:

> Yeah, I'm not sure about the "use and expand" idea.  I don't see the
> benefit of that, and it seems like it would cause confusion.
>
> What I was envisioning was something more like
>
>     DISPLAY=${~} xsomething
>
> or
>
>     http_proxy=${~} wget "$url"
>
> which would invoke the command with one environment variable removed.
> You could combine it with other assignments that add env vars, too:
>
>     http_proxy=${~} WGET_ASKPASS="$pass_program" wget "$url"
>
> This may be a stupid example, but I'm only trying to demonstrate the
> syntax, not actually propose a beneficial feature here.  Maybe xmb
> could give us a more real-world example of what he's aiming for.
>

Whereas, the syntax I've settled on would allow all the same stuff:
{~DISPLAY} xsomething
{~http_proxy} wget "$url"
{~http_proxy} WGET_ASKPASS="$pass_program" wget "$url"

Of course, right now Bash is just going to tell me that the command
{~DISPLAY} wasn't found. Would I be so bold as to expect people to stop
writing functions and commands named {~something}? Or have to quote those
words when trying to invoke them.