Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!swrinde!mips!pacbell.com!tandem!zorch!xanthian From: xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Does 2.0 have REAL wildcards? (was Re: VLT Help needed) Message-ID: <1991Jan1.052216.672@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> Date: 1 Jan 91 05:22:16 GMT References: <8pwxo8v@Unify.Com> <1990Dec30.163531.22293@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <238@coplex.UUCP> Distribution: na Organization: SF-Bay Public-Access Unix Lines: 50 dean@coplex.UUCP (Dean Brooks) writes: >xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) writes: >> "ARP" is the AmigaDOS Replacement Project, a cooperative PD code >> effort that got off to a fair start, but died for lack of interest >> with the code still buggy and the source unavailable to fix it up. It >> had the advantage that the library and executables were small and did >> a few nice things that AmigaDOS didn't, the _BIG_ disadvantage that >> they were incompatible with the CLI script and wildcard formats. > Well, hoorah for ARP then. Standard AmigaDOS (1.2/1.3) has had brain > dead pattern matching from the beginning, with not supporting standard > conventions, and placing the pattern matching code within the > executables, rather than the console device. Horrible embarrassing confession time. I once held such opinions, and even espoused them right here in comp.sys.amiga. I was wrong, and I got educated out of my ignorance by people on the net. The Amiga wildcards, compared to the Unix wildcards, are more "correct", more powerful, and more convenient. They are just unfamiliar to Unix users. There are no "standard conventions"; you just think your piece of the elephant is all the elephant there is. When you become completely familiar with the Amiga conventions, you wish you had them in Unix. Sigh. To your second point; wild card expansion _belongs_ in the executable rather than in the shell. It would be nice if the normal case could be punted right back out to a resident library to save wheel reinvention, but the point has been well made here that files are by no means the only things one might want to resolve with wildcards, and so you daren't do the resolution and lose the wildcards before the application executable has had a shot at it as it was typed. By deferring the resolution to the executable, you allow, for example, a database access to resolve the same familiar wildcards into sets of records instead of sets of files. If you don't do that, you get into the situation of the grotesque and effectively unusable quoting conventions of, for example, Unix sh or csh, to pass your wildcards in unmangled, or you have to make up a whole second set of wildcards for your application, even more confusing. > However, I was curious, not having used 2.0 yet, does it (2.0) support > real UNIX/regex style pattern matching? That is the only reason for > actually using ARP, and a pretty good one at that. Anybody care to > comment? I understand that you can set a flag in one or more of the beta releases of 2.0 to enable specifically the Unix "*" as an alias for the AmigaOS "#?", but this just causes you problems with "*" as a quoting character, so, for the reasons noted above, you're better off not using it. Kent, the man from xanth.