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From: news@bbn.COM (News system owner ID)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: ls
Message-ID: <46913@bbn.COM>
Date: 13 Oct 89 20:45:17 GMT
References: <21100@adm.BRL.MIL>
Reply-To: pplacewa@capella.bbn.com (Paul W. Placeway)
Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge MA
Lines: 38

In article <21100@adm.BRL.MIL> bush%ecs.oxford.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk (Mark Bush) writes:
< grep 'pattern' .[^.]* *
< 
< will probably match `.'!

If the shell is _correctly_ handling the [^LETTERS] regexp (which Sys
V shell thinks is [!LETTERS], but grep knows the truth), then
neither . nor .. will be matched.  Remeber: [ABC] means match one of
'A', 'B', or 'C'.  This is _non-optional_; there must be a letter there.

< .[\ -,\/-~]*
< 
< does work in bash but seems to want to include both `.' and `..' in csh!!!!
< Of course this pattern precludes files starting `.-' as well but who cares?

Neat; a bug.  Tcsh gets this wrong too, in case anyone is wondering;
I'll have to fix that.  It _should_ work in everything.  I think it's
caused by a quoting-bit (8th bit inside csh -- don't ask) problem,
with the \/ (backquoted forward-quote).

Try this:

	capella quant_test 332 -> echo 'foo is bar' > '.-'
	capella quant_test 333 -> echo .[\ --/-~]*
	.-
	capella quant_test 334 -> 

Note that you don't have to quote the second -; it's only magic when
_between_ letters.

< The inconsistancies here are more far reaching that it seems at first.
< Perhaps shells should be written so that `.*' precludes `.' and `..'?

Nope; not at all.  Ever.  If the user can't get the regexp right,
that's not the fault of the shell, and the shell shouldn't be made to
work _wrong_.

		-- Paul Placeway <now PPlaceway@bbn.com>