Usage: ASSIGN [[-]<user-variable> [<whatever>]]
  ASSIGN allows you to create user defined variables which 
  are automatically expanded by ircII in aliases using the 
  $variable-name format.  For example, if you had executed:
    ASSIGN me The Big Cheese
  Then, in an alias, $me would expand to "The Big Cheese".  These
  are straight textual substitutions.  You can use these kind of
  variables as counters and indexes into lists as well.  For example:
    ASSIGN index 0
    ASSIGN index ${index+1}
  The first line sets "$index" to 0, the second increments "index"
  by 1, making it equal to 1.  Please note that the second line
  would always work if used in an alias (where $ is always expanded).
  However, if you wanted it to be expanded at the input line, you
  must first SET INPUT_ALIASES to ON.

  Note that mathematical expressions must be enclosed in {}s, or
  otherwise the assignment is a strict textual substitution and the
  + would be treated as the end of a variable name and not as a plus
  sign.  (See the help file on @, which is the alias operator for
  "This is a mathematical expression"

  Suppose that you wanted to use the variable index we assigned above
  to get a single word out of a list.
  You could do something like:
	ALIAS word ECHO $($index)
  Then by doing the following:
	WORD This is a test
  would be substituted like so:
	ECHO $($index)
  where if $index is 1, then $($index) expands to $(1).
  $(1) expands to $1, which expands to the word "is"
  
  The use of sub-aliases (pointers) can be nested.  For example:
    ASSIGN A Hey You!
    ASSIGN B A
    ASSIGN C B
    ALIAS NESTING echo $($($C))
  If you executed the alias NESTING, "Hey You!" would be displayed.

  The following formats are also legal:
    $#name	evaluates to the number of words in name
    $@name	evaluates to the number of characters in name
  You can use these with the mathematical expressions as well, 
  for example:
    ASSIGN foo Testing One Two
    ECHO $#foo $@foo
    ASSIGN junk ${#foo + @foo}
  The ECHO line will display "3 15" and the varialbe JUNK will
  have the value 18.

  Additionally, assigning a value to the special variable 
  FUNCTION_RETURN makes the alias a function, which can be used
  in the form  $alias(args)  and used as a value in an expression.

IMPORTANT NOTE:
  There is a special version of this command called '@'
  for use in aliases and scripts.  It is well suited to mathematical
  operations.  Its use over ASSIGN is highly recommended.

See Also:
  @
  ALIAS
  IF
  SET INPUT_ALIASES
  ALIAS functions
