i guess we have differing opinions on how $ifmatch should operate. like i stated in the post that started this thread, my thoughts were merely an opinion.
on the topic of improvements or changes to $ifmatch, i believe the best way to modify it would be to treat it like an array, possibly containing the last 10 or 20 $ifmatches, which resets after each operation is finished.
in my example above, $ifmatch(1) could return $time, and $ifmatch(2) could return $version. in addition, a switch like 'l' could be added, making sure the list only applies to "local" $ifmatches, i.e. $ifmatch(1,l) in my example would return $time.
i would never have said anything about this, but i posted it right after i concluded that such behavior was the source of a bug which i had spent several days trying to track down.
