Sure, a comment can be used to place a line in your history but that doesn't really address the examples I had. Just seems to me like a lone semicolon could be treated as a newline/noop. I can't seem to think of anything that this would break but, of course, that doesn't mean it wouldn't. The end of a case in a switch statement is certainly an interesting one, hadn't thought of that, but it should be possible to handle that by checking for ;; as a token before ;.
I might mention that ksh, zsh and tcsh all allow lines to begin with a semicolon. zsh even allows "; ; ; echo hello world ; ; ;" although ksh only allows a single ; at the beginning of a line. On Sun, Apr 8, 2012 at 6:48 PM, Joseph Fredette <jfred...@gmail.com> wrote: > Could also use a #, no? > > On Sun, Apr 8, 2012 at 8:46 PM, Steven W. Orr <ste...@syslang.net> wrote: > >> On 4/7/2012 4:00 PM, Elliott Forney wrote: >> >>> I wish bash would happily execute lines that begin with a semicolon, >>> i.e., treat it as a no-op followed by a command. The following >>> examples come to mind: >>> >>> $ infloop& echo hello >>> [2] 11361 >>> hello >>> $ infloop&; echo hello >>> bash: syntax error near unexpected token `;' >>> >>> $ echo hello; echo world >>> hello >>> world >>> $ echo hello;; echo world >>> bash: syntax error near unexpected token `;;' >>> >>> $ ; echo hello world >>> bash: syntax error near unexpected token `;' >>> >>> Any thoughts? >>> >>> Thanks, >>> Elliott Forney >>> >> >> Just use a colon. >> >> : echo Hello world. >> >> I use it all the time to 'park' a command in my history. Then when I'm >> ready, I just back up to it and remove the colon. >> >> >> -- >> Time flies like the wind. Fruit flies like a banana. Stranger things have >> .0. >> happened but none stranger than this. Does your driver's license say Organ >> ..0 >> Donor?Black holes are where God divided by zero. Listen to me! We are all- >> 000 >> individuals! What if this weren't a hypothetical question? >> steveo at syslang.net >> >>
