[Remind-Fans] pasting after SPECIAL considered harmful

[Ian! D. Allen]

As I noted previously, this silently fails to set the trigger date
(function is zero) but gives no "Can't nest" error:

    REM SPECIAL ["COLOR 66 66 66 " + trigdate() ]

but this works fine (trigger date is set correctly):

    REM SPECIAL [ "COLOR 66 66 66" ] [ trigdate() ]

and this works fine (trigger date is set correctly):

    REM SPECIAL [ "COLOR" ] 66 66 66 [ trigdate() ]

and this works fine (trigger date is set correctly):

    SET T "SPECIAL"
    SET C "COLOR"
    REM [ T ] [ C ] 66 66 66 [ trigdate() ]

Tell me again why the first one fails to set the trigger date, but all the
others work fine?  I don't think it's just a problem with "not allowed
to paste the type field and the word following SPECIAL is secretly part
of the "type"".

Maybe this is a more accurate explanation?

    If a paste expression is evaluated before the full type of a reminder
    is known (and this unfortunately includes knowing the word following a
    "SPECIAL" type), the trigger date may not be defined.

Again, I wish Remind would define the trigger date after having seen just
the "SPECIAL" keyword rather than requiring the following word as well,
but it's easy enough to work around.

If the code can't be tweaked, then Remind should generate one of those
"Can't nest" warnings or error messages if SPECIAL is followed by an
expression.

-- 
| Ian! D. Allen, MMath  -  idallen at idallen.ca  -  Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
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