Closed frno7 closed 3 years ago
I saw
!!
Hmm, I only see !
with the man
command but I have probably messed up the quoting anyway...
"invokes shell-command..." sounds a little bit convoluted. Maybe "Whitespace followed by
!
, instead of writing the file, pipes the content to a shell-command."
This is somewhat problematic, I think, because in the manual (and elsewhere) the word ‘file’ is used in two different ways: both as name (path) and as a collection of characters. This duality is normal in everyday usage, but it easily becomes confusing in terse technical writing. Hence
instead of writing the file
technically refers to a name (path), because the file as a collection of characters is actually still written, to an anonymous pipe. I think it’s important to avoid contradicting this duality of the word ‘file’. Perhaps simply whitespace followed by ! pipes the file to shell-command
is acceptable?
One way to avoid some confusion in the manual is to replace the word file
with path
or filepath
, as appropriate.
Incidentally, the manual could be clarified in several other ways: For example, it says shell-argument(s)
in places where it seems shell-commands
would be appropriate.
Thanks for the contribution!
I saw
"invokes shell-command..." sounds a little bit convoluted. Maybe "Whitespace followed by
!!
!
, instead of writing the file, pipes the content to a shell-command."