Re: psychiatric help

On 2026-04-04 15:30, Mark J. Reed wrote:
> It's not "losing the backslash". There is no backslash. The backslash 
> tells the shell that the space is literal.
I know.  The problem is that the need to indicate the hard space 
remains.  As the command tail is passed to another function, the need 
for that reminder must be retained.  It's a deep problem -- soft vs. 
hard spaces.  If the shell used '\ ' to insert some character that was 
an explicitly hard space, then of course the problem would vanish, the 
backslash would only be needed the one time and the hard space would 
remain hard.  But without the backslash of course it 'reverts' to being 
a soft space.
> So if you want access to the specific way the command is typed, you 
> use a normal function or script; by the time it's executed it's too 
> late.You need to hook into the completion or editing (ZLE) functionality.
Yeah, I'd sure like to know how to do that.  As I mentioned a while back 
that code accessing $BUFFER sounded like the right place to look, but 
it's way above my pay grade.