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From: maart@cs.vu.nl (Maarten Litmaath)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell
Subject: Re: copying files
Message-ID: <8525@star.cs.vu.nl>
Date: 17 Dec 90 19:40:36 GMT
References: <1990Dec3.215656.8961@en.ecn.purdue.edu> <1990Dec07.201727.11006@Kesa.COM> <28626@mimsy.umd.edu>
Sender: news@cs.vu.nl
Reply-To: maart@cs.vu.nl (Maarten Litmaath)
Organization: VU Dept. of Computer Science, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Lines: 31

In article <28626@mimsy.umd.edu>,
	chris@mimsy.umd.edu (Chris Torek) writes:
)...
)>ls -d .[^.]*
)
)This does not work, for several reasons:
)
)	- the syntax given (left-bracket caret period right-bracket)
)	  only works in POSIXish shells.

POSIX 1003.2 Draft 10 does not agree with you, Chris...

)	  Among those excluded are all
)	  of the 4BSD and System V shells except *very* recent work.
)	  Some System V shells have an alternative syntax ([!.]).

...just like the POSIX shell.  POSIX `blessed' the existing practice (*),
that is `!', instead of `^', which would have been more consistent with
the regular expression syntaxes.  But who gives a damn about consistency?

(*) The System V people chose `!' because `^' was an ancient synonym for
the pipe symbol:

	date ^ cat

The shell syntax of POSIX 1003.2 Draft 10 does not mention `^' as an
alternative for `|' (anymore).  Good!
--
In the Bourne shell syntax tabs and spaces are equivalent almost everywhere.
The exception: _indented_ here documents.  :-(
Does anyone remember the famous mistake Makefile-novices often make?