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From: bob@wyse.wyse.com (Bob McGowen x4312 dept208)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell
Subject: Re: copying files
Message-ID: <3071@wyse.wyse.com>
Date: 21 Dec 90 02:27:56 GMT
References: <1990Dec07.201727.11006@Kesa.COM> <28626@mimsy.umd.edu> <8525@star.cs.vu.nl> <1990Dec18.155945.10089@usenet.ins.cwru.edu>
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Reply-To: bob@wyse.UUCP (Bob McGowen x4312 dept208)
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In article <1990Dec18.155945.10089@usenet.ins.cwru.edu> chet@po.CWRU.Edu writes:
>In article <8525@star.cs.vu.nl> maart@cs.vu.nl (Maarten Litmaath) writes:
>
>>...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?

It was already inconsistent.  In grep et al a dot refers to a single
character, an * repeats the preceding character 0 or more times.
The shell uses ? for a single character and * means 0 or more of any
character at that position...  In any case there are several areas where
the shell differs from good ol' grep type RE's.  And as Maarten notes, it
IS consistent within itself.

>
>It is sort of consistent, in a twisted sort of way.  Everywhere in the
>shell that `not' is needed, `!' is used:  to invert the return value of


Bob McGowan  (standard disclaimer, these are my own ...)
Product Support, Wyse Technology, San Jose, CA
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