Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!know!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!emory!hubcap!ncrcae!opusc!yarnall From: yarnall@opusc.csd.scarolina.edu (Ken Yarnall) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech Subject: Re: PIPEs Summary: Beaten to the punch... Message-ID: <1990Nov4.215000.2760@opusc.csd.scarolina.edu> Date: 4 Nov 90 21:50:00 GMT References: <6977@sugar.hackercorp.com> <1990Nov4.054222.24999@agate.berkeley.edu> <6984@sugar.hackercorp.com> Organization: Math Department, University of South Carolina (ahem; The USC) Lines: 39 In article <6984@sugar.hackercorp.com> peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) writes: + +I'm unhappy with "extensions" to the pattern matching convention, particularly +since I think it should be done in the shell (well, I can dream). How about +making a second-order jump: + + ^. in pascal becomes -> in C, so: + +1> list lformat="%s" -> cpio -ocv > rdf:df0 + +So "->" is "redirect to program". Fooey! That is my favorite choice, and I wanted to spring it on you (given the recent chastizing post about posting non-essential stuff!). It seems to be the most logical choice, since (a) it is another derivation of `>', like `>>' for append, and >, <, >>, <<, and -> all seem to me to be in the same class of operators. I really dislike wildcard expansion in the shell. Granted, it would have been nicer in 1.3, since there was no library support of standard pattern matching, but now that 2.0 has good, standardized routines to do this, I can't for the life of me see how shell expansion is superior. The amount of coding that must be done is no greater, the size of your programs is no greater, and having the expansion done by the current program eliminates all of that silly quoting that you have to remember to do in Un*x, whenever you want to pass wildcards to a program. It is just a lot easier to write a program like Arp's move, which does exactly what I expect it to if I say move #?.c sys:backups/src/#?.bak since move gets to decide how to handle the patterns. I guess this is a religious question. +. ken -- Ken Yarnall /// yarnall@usceast.cs.scarolina.EDU Math Department, USC \\\/// yarnall@ucseast.UUCP Columbia, S.C. 29208 \\\/ (803)777-5218 `You'd better tie me up.' -- from the movie, "Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down"