Re: after ids

On Jul 4, 12:15 am, Alexandre Ferrieux <alexandre.ferri...@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Indeed, and I'm all in favour of implementing [at] - just haven't
had the time to do it myself (and it *does* need a TIP).

An alias is always possible of course, but keep in mind that this wall-
clock semantics has been attached to [after] since the beginning, so
it must stay that way.

This comes up repeatedly and I very strongly disagree. The [after]
command is documented to implement intervals, not wall-clock. The
fact that it has hiccups when the wall clock changes is just a
long-standing bad bug, and is no reason to retain the incorrect
behavior. Applications that rely on the current behavior have
been brought up in discussions, but they turn out to be mostly
mythical, and what few do exist should just be fixed (coding that
uses [after] with the intention of [at], even when such coding,
works, is too obscure). On the other hand, almost every use of
[after] is to implement a short delta-time delay, and these break
badly once or twice a year with the current [after].

Can't we follow the principle of least surprise here?

Donald Arseneau asnd@xxxxxxxxx
.