Re: [Bug-apl] Tilde expansion support in READLINE_HISTORY_PATH

[Dr . Jürgen Sauermann]

Hi Alexey,

thank you for submitting the patch. The effect of the patch seems to be to change the
default value of the directory where an APL history is stored. The question is then
if a reasonable default value should be the user's home directory (as the patch would
do) or the current directory (which can also annoy at times).

I have long thought about this question myself. Both default values have their pros
and their cons and the decision (to go for the current directory and not for the user's home)
was not an easy one. My considerations were these:

- the current directory is more likely to exist than a user's home.
- "APL power users" are likely to have multiple APL projects at the same time. For them
  the home directory default would be the wrong one
- The need for ~ (or $HOME for that matter) puts additional requirements on the platform which
 harms portability. I have always tried to minimize the number of environment variables used
by GNU APL, in order to maximize usability.
- the chosen default value can be easily changed by the user by simply editing a preferences
  file. Therefore the actual choice of the default value does not matter in practice. I suppose
 that applying the patch and recompiling APL is far more work than simply editing a preferences
 file (which is the designated way to choose the directory).

Best Regards,
Jürgen

On 7/4/19 2:26 PM, Alexey Dokuchaev wrote:

Hi there APLers!

I found it too annoying that APL creates .apl.history file in whatever
is current directory and spams my filesystem, so I've patched it to
create this file in user's $HOME directory by default.  Maybe you'll
find it useful as well.

./danfe