Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!shadooby!oxtrap!mudos!mju
From: mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us (Marc Unangst)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: What interprets *.*
Message-ID: <635.25170D1F@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us>
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 89 15:44:03 EDT
Organization: FidoNet node 1:120/129 - Starship Enterprise, Ann Arbor MI

In article <32164@ames.arc.nasa.gov>, gahooten@titan (Gregory A. Hooten) writes:
 >In Unix, it is the shell that interprets the character *, what in
 >DOS will do the same thing?  Is it left to the Command.com, or is it
 >left to each utility to do on its own?

Each program has to do it on its own.  This is actually much worse
than COMMAND.COM doing it for you, because then you have differing
interpretations of things like "*89.*" (does it mean "*.*", like
COMMAND.COM thinks it does, or "any file with `89' in the name",
like some other utilities do?), plus the bother of having to code the
wildcard handling into programs that you write.

On the plus side, it probably makes filename parsing a bit easier
for the programmer, because they don't have to be able to parse
a list of filenames the same way a Unix program does.

--  
Marc Unangst
Internet: mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us
UUCP    : ...!uunet!sharkey!mudos!mju
Fidonet : Marc Unangst of 1:120/129.0
BBS     : The Starship Enterprise, 1200/2400 bps, +1 313-665-2832
ÿ