TIP #293: Argument Expansion with Leading *
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TIP:	293
Title:	Argument Expansion with Leading *
Version:	$Revision: 1.4 $
Authors:	Miguel Sofer <msofer@users.sourceforge.net>
State:	Final
Type:	Project
Tcl-Version:	8.5
Vote:	Done
Created:	Thu Nov 02 00:00:00 UTC 2006
Abstract
Tcl shall use * to denote argument expansion, replacing the current expand.
Rationale
There seems to be a consensus that the functionality of expand is exactly what was needed, but the syntax could be nicer. The problem, both back in 2003 and today, is that there is no general agreement on which is the best one. However, the issue of ugliness is regularly revived in the mailing lists so it is not going away soon. Moreover, an alpha release in a popular distribution allows the use of  instead of expand.
A compromise solution, *, is less verbose and "ugly" than expand, and less prone to typographical errors than plain . It is inspired using the mnemonic that the character "*" is already used to denote "all items" in other contexts.
Detailed Proposal
After two years experience with expand, this TIP proposes the following amendment to [157]:
1.	The officially sanctioned expansion syntax will henceforth be *, in replacement of the previous expand.
2.	The usage of both expand and  will be deprecated.
3.	This is a syntax-only change.
Compatibility
Note that this TIP removes expand and  as prefix-syntax, which will break code that users might already have in production based off earlier alpha release of 8.5.
Copyright
This document has been placed in the public domain.
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