Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> The issue here is mostly my lack of awareness about what is an Elisp
>> command and what is a system program.
>
> Why do you need to know that?
>
> If you want to know that so you could always get the same responses as
> from another system shell, then perhaps we should have an option to
> tell Eshell to always invoke an external program (maybe we already
> have such an option, but I couldn't find it).

No, not like that, more like a friendly reminder: "this 'date' behaves
the Eshell way, while that 'rmdir' is the system program".

>> Maybe having different syntax highlighting for the "verb" depending on
>> whether it's a system program or an Elisp command would help avoiding
>> the pitfall.
>
> Isn't it true that a verb that doesn't begin with a '*' is _never_ a
> system program in Eshell?

I'm tempted to answer "no, it's not true", but we might be
misunderstood.

As far as I got it, the '*' is here to force Eshell to use the system
program, while no '*' tells Eshell to use its own version if available,
or the system program otherwise.