On 22/05/2014 17:09, Joseph Wright wrote: > Hello all, > > Currently, we have \ior_open:Nn for reading from a file, but no defined > interface for using the 'pipe' shell escape provided by pdfTeX. As we > forbid spaces in file names, why do we do that? Spaces in filenames always seem like an abomination to me. But that seems to be a relic on the 1970s I've noticed that people who started using computers this century don't seem to think anything of using a descriptive phrase as a filename... Shouldn't we just allow spaces (and leading | or any other system dependent special syntax) just surrounding any user supplied name by " " to keep it together? > something like > > \ior_open:Nn \g_some_ior {"|kpsewhich~-all~file.tex"} why not simply ior_open:Nn \g_some_ior {|kpsewhich~-all~file.tex} and let web2c worry about the fact it isn't a real file? > > fails with an error. A defined interface("\ior_pipe:Nn") has been > suggested > (http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/15666333#15666333). > > Thoughts on the concept/naming/etc.? Note that this is opening a > pseudo-file so does need to be related in some way to \ior_open:Nn. David