Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!uwm.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!uxe.cso.uiuc.edu!mcdonald
From: mcdonald@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: System 7.0 concern & wish list (LON
Message-ID: <110300014@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 16 Oct 89 09:40:13 GMT
References: <8821@spool.cs.wisc.edu>
Lines: 19
Nf-ID: #R:spool.cs.wisc.edu:8821:uxe.cso.uiuc.edu:110300014:000:958
Nf-From: uxe.cso.uiuc.edu!mcdonald    Oct 15 14:57:00 1989


Why add wildcard searches to the MAC, rather than some sort of
keywords attached some other way. Simple. Obvious: flexibility.
The *USER** can attach whatever meaning he wishes to a filename - 
with zero additional work, as a file has to have a name. And he
could
use that info any way he wishes. That is the real beauty of UNIX,
and other real OS shells. Flexibility - do what you wish. The
user is not limited to what the system designer wants him to do.
The MAC has a reasonably good, in fact very good, user interface
inside programs. But the top-level shell, the "finder", is
excruciatingly bad due to its limitations. Apparently even APPLE
recognizes this, as their development environments provide
more functionality. 

So, the bottom line is - provide an info section as part of 
files directory entries - but allow using any part of it - 
including the name, with the usual wildcards (or regular expressions)
to do searches, copies, deletes, etc.