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Re: changeset 5920 / manual.xml.head



Hi,

* Vincent Lefevre wrote:

>   Whenever a user-defined variable is used in an assignment for a built-in
>   variable or vice versa, Mutt string representations to do the
>   assignment. As a result, a user-defined variable can be assigned to any
>   other variable under the restriction that its content is valid. See the
>   following section for examples.

> I don't understand the first sentence.

When you assign a new value to a variable, you may use a my_ variables
using $my_ syntax regardless of what type the target variable is. This
is because mutt uses string representations of both and parses it for
the to-be-assigned var.

For example pager_index_lines is a number, and when you do:

    set my_foo=$pager_index_lines

my_foo still is a string because pager_index_lines was converted to
string before the assignment was made. And the same vice versa:

    set pager_index_lines=$my_foo

parses the string in $my_foo to an integer number.

Any suggestions for a better wording (besides a missing "uses")?

Rocco