Re: Output quoting (was: Re: Possible solution for special characters in makefile paths)

> Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2014 14:02:59 +0100
> From: Tim Murphy <[email protected]>
> Cc: Frank Heckenbach <[email protected]>, [email protected]
> 
> > Then SHELL_QUOTE, whatever its name, is not what you want.  What you
> > want is a way to write an extension (in C or in Guile) that would hook
> > into this expansion, and let you do whatever you need.  IOW, you want
> > to ask for infrastructure that would allow extensions to do things
> > like that (I don't think we have such an infrastructure right, but
> > maybe I'm mistaken).
> >
> > Let's not (ab)use quoting for things it is not supposed to provide and
> > support.
> 
> You can't control what people do with a feature that you add to make.

No, but I can tell them "if it hurts, don't do that".

>  When you show them a new thing that is possible they will use it. Why
> make it a crap one-purpose feature when it can so obviously be made
> generally useful and with so little work?

There's nothing wrong with one-purpose features.  Each feature should
do its intended job well, no more, no less.

You are asking for a much more broad feature.  I agree that it will be
very useful, I just don't see why we need to lump it together with
quoting.  It's not a natural extension of quoting in any sense.

> "Feature creep" is just a pejorative term that one can throw at any
> unexpected suggestion.  Surely one can distinguish between a useful
> generalisation of a very specific concept and an unnecessary feature.
>  Surely it's a good thing to generalise a capability so that it can be
> used widely?

I don't see how your suggestion is a generalization of file-name
quoting.