Re: merge pick and scan

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Philipp,

> To scan selected messages currently a combination of scan and pick is
> used.  It would be nice to be able to write something like:
>
>     scan -from bob
>
> In order to do this we could add the -form/-format switches to pick
> and make scan a link to pick.  To avoid most breakage pick would use
> "%(msg)" format by default and scan.default if called as scan.  This
> way only some scan aliases would break (if -form/-format is not
> explicitly set for them).  All other usages would still work.

Did you know pick(1) says

    HISTORY
        In previous versions of MH, the pick command would show, scan,
        or refile the selected messages.  This was rather “inverted
        logic” from the Unix point of view, so pick was changed to
        define sequences and output those sequences.  Hence, pick can be
        used to generate the arguments for all other MH commands,
        instead of giving pick endless switches for invoking those
        commands itself.

I'm generally not in favour because it seems to be combining two
specific things rather than thinking more orthoganally.

For example, I'd quite like to do

    refile +archive -from foo -and -subject bar
    forw -mime -date '01 Apr'

IOW, make pick's expressions first-class citizens of all nmh command
parsing.  Except I think the syntax is wordy and something like

    refile +archive from:foo subject:bar

would be better, including the implicit logical conjunction.

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.