%val{history} format is ambiguous

[jdugan6240]

%val{history} format is ambiguous

[Screwtapello]

If I echo -- %val{history} then it looks like you're right - two edits instead of one that includes history notation.

However, if I echo -quoting shell -- %val{history} I get:

'-' '554880' '1' '0' '554881' '-' '+0.0|sd +0.0|testing'

...which shows that Kakoune does know where the "breaks" are between each item, and there's no ambiguity.

%val{history} (like many other expansions) expands to a list of words, not a single word (unless you use it inside double quotes). As long as you pass the result in contexts that accept a list of words (such as a Kakoune or shell command), or quote it properly (such as with echo -quoting), it should be fine.

In particular, if you want to export Kakoune's history to an external program for analysis/processing, you'd probably want to make a FIFO somewhere in a temporary directory, have the external program read from it, and use echo -quoting kakoune -to-file /path/to/my/fifo to send the data to the program (using Kakoune quoting because it's probably easier for some other program to parse than shell quoting).

[jdugan6240]

%val{history} (like many other expansions) expands to a list of words, not a single word (unless you use it inside double quotes). 

Yeah, I figured there was something I missed. I had a hard time believing that an editor with this much thought put into its design would have such an obvious oversight. Turns out it doesn't 🙂.