On Wed, Feb 22, 2017 at 5:59 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
Ah, I see why *that* wants to know about it ... I think. I suppose you're arguing that variable expansion shouldn't be able to insert, say, an \else in a non-active branch? Maybe, but if it can insert an \else in an active branch, then why not non-active too? Seems a bit inconsistent.
The major reason was avoiding situations like what Daniel showed: where value of a variable that is meaningless/undefined in the current false-block context gets expanded anyway, and thus code inside a false block has effects outside of that block. Granted, his example was contrived. I'm open to removing that feature and seeing what breaks in the test cases.
