Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!virtech!cpcahil
From: cpcahil@virtech.UUCP (Conor P. Cahill)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: ls -A
Message-ID: <1245@virtech.UUCP>
Date: 7 Oct 89 13:08:58 GMT
References: <15@minya.UUCP> <14611@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <1989Oct7.032907.27496@rpi.edu>
Distribution: na
Organization: Virtual Technologies Inc
Lines: 30

In article <1989Oct7.032907.27496@rpi.edu>, tale@pawl.rpi.edu (David C Lawrence) writes:
> In <1989Oct6.201107.9465@eci386.uucp> jmm@eci386.uucp (John Macdonald) writes:
> John> Like all things, treating .* files specially has advantages and
> John> disadvantages.  Some form of special treatment *was* necessary -
> John> otherwise "rm *" would remove "." and ".."!
> 
> No it wouldn't.   rm already does special treatment of `.' and `..'.
> Some form of special treatment by shell expansion of * wasn't
> "necessary" at all.


It might not have been necessary, but it was a design decision that had to 
be made and I, for one, like it.  Others may not like it, but that always 
happens with design decisions.

I know that I can see all of the files that begin with a . if I want
to, but most of the time I don't want to see them and dont have to.

The shell glob function must match the default operation of the directory
lister otherwise you will remove files that you are not aware you are
removing.  Once the decision was made on the directory lister, there was 
no real choice on the shell globber.

PS -> I'm not sure which decision was made first (dir lister or shell globber)
but the two must agree.
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| Conor P. Cahill     uunet!virtech!cpcahil      	703-430-9247	!
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