Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!tale From: tale@pawl.rpi.edu (David C Lawrence) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: ls -A Message-ID: <1989Oct8.212100.12355@rpi.edu> Date: 8 Oct 89 21:21:00 GMT References: <15@minya.UUCP> <14611@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <1989Oct6.201107.9465@eci386.uucp> <1989Oct7.032907.27496@rpi.edu> Distribution: na Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY Lines: 40 In <1989Oct7.032907.27496@rpi.edu> I wrote in response to Michael's claim that special treatment of shell expansion of * was necessary to not include . files so that rm wouldn't remove `.' and `..'. In mrd@sun.clarkson.edu (Michael DeCorte): Michael> how about: Michael> grep foo * Michael> cat * | foo Michael> tar -cf - * # opps grab . and .. in this one [...] Michael> echo * | cpio -o > /dev/tape # see above How about them? This whole thing is an outgrowth of, "I want to see all files but not `.' and `..'" and the combined conspiracy (in Steve Summit's words) of ls and shell globbing to hide .files. What about when I do want to grep all of the files (but not . and ..) in the current directory? Shell globbing alone is not sufficient for this where .files exist. Michael> sure if you want to be consistent then the shell include . files Michael> but it often (usaully?) not what you want it to do. Yes, often. I am not so sure about usually though. Except in my own home directory, I usually want to know what all the entries in a directory are. Michael> Plus I really don't want to see the 51 .* files that I have in my ~ Michael> directory [...] I think Steve Summit had a very good comment about this in <14611@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>. I agree with most of his comments in the article. Steve> I've never understood [...] why a simple bijection based on the Steve> first character of the filename is a useful and general Steve> selection model. Dave -- (setq mail '("tale@pawl.rpi.edu" "tale@itsgw.rpi.edu" "tale@rpitsmts.bitnet"))