Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!ginosko!uunet!bloom-beacon!spdcc!ima!minya!jc
From: jc@minya.UUCP (John Chambers)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: ls -A
Message-ID: <36@minya.UUCP>
Date: 12 Oct 89 23:18:29 GMT
References: <15@minya.UUCP> <14611@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <1989Oct7.032907.27496@rpi.edu>
Distribution: na
Organization: home
Lines: 28

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.

Which brings up a point that seems to have been missed.  The special
treatment of filenames starting with '.' isn't done by the kernel; it
is done by the shell.  The shell isn't a hard-wired part of Unix.  One
of the standard rejoinders to this sort of complaint is "If you don't
like the way the shell does it, write your own."

Granted, there's a small bit of facetiousness in this.  The Bourne shell
is effectively a mandatory part of a deliverable Unix system.  But the
basic point still stands:  The interpretation of '.' isn't done at the
lowest levels; it is done at a high level, in the command interpreter,
and in a few utilities like ls.  It's not hard to write utilities that 
follow other rules.  Go ahead; it's fun...

-- 
#echo 'Opinions Copyright 1989 by John Chambers; for licensing information contact:'
echo '	John Chambers <{adelie,ima,mit-eddie}!minya!{jc,root}> (617/484-6393)'
echo ''
saying