Kakscript for the first time is hard, documenting my journey

lobre · July 17, 2025, 8:45pm

Thanks a lot for confirming my reading of your comment. I think I get what you were saying now.

In the end, I decided to put that paragraph about "$@" in its own subsection. It makes the article a little longer, but I prefer aiming for completeness here. Effectively, as Kakoune is still niche, I think people who will read it will be people deeply interested in knowing such things. So it definitely makes sense to include what has taken days for me to understand into a bearable explanation.

At least this article will help my future self when I will have to write more kakscript or more POSIX shell. I have a strong desire to write more kakscript even if I don’t necessarily find the time. But for when I will have that time, this will be helpful for sure.

Thanks again for helping me understand all of that @Screwtapello, I am grateful to learn about this POSIX world that is more and more forgotten by newer developers. I am glad I can understand better every day.

And about this thread, of course I am still open to comments and feedback about the article if things can be improved.

Here is the added subsection:

gist.github.com

https://gist.github.com/lobre/4838c6859ff7d89e43447f07432cba7d#why-quote--if-we-want-splitting

README.md

# Understanding Kakoune’s Command Language: Parsing, Evaluations, and Beyond

Kakoune is a modal editor. That means when you’re editing text, you’re constantly interacting with the editor using a powerful language of keystrokes — moving around, selecting text, transforming content, all through short, expressive commands typed directly in the editing interface. This is the **core editing experience**, and it’s what gives Kakoune its speed and fluidity.

But this isn’t the only way to interact with Kakoune.

There’s another side to Kakoune — a more structural, programmable one — which lets you interact with the editor through **commands**. These commands can be used to configure Kakoune, automate behavior, and define complex workflows. Commands can be written in configuration files, invoked via custom keybindings, or typed directly into the command prompt.

This document focuses on that second side: the **command interface**. We will explore how commands work, how they are built, and how Kakoune interprets them. We’ll define the basic building blocks — strings, words, parsing, expansions — and build up to understand how Kakoune processes scripts and configurations written in what is often called **kakscript**.

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And also, I updated the links to the spec to point to the version of 2024.

Kratacoa · August 10, 2025, 3:18pm

Couldn’t this be added to the community articles?