why Unix?

[Jarrett Billingsley]

On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 7:53 PM, Steven Schveighoffer
<schveiguy at yahoo.com> wrote:

> OK, that was *really* confusing, let me re-explain:
>
> if you are in interactive mode, the default is shell mode, and % turns miniD
> on and off, which continues beyond a single line
> if you are in a script file, then you are always in miniD mode, unless it
> sees %, which turns it to shell mode for a single line.

Close.  In either mode, % switches to the other mode for a single
*statement*, and statements can span multiple lines.  In interactive
mode, the interpreter will compile and run your code when you have
finished a single statement, no matter if it's a single line or if
it's a huge multi-line loop statement.