Path: utzoo!utgpu!cunews!bnrgate!bwdls61.bnr.ca!bwdls58!leibniz!walt From: walt@bcarh133.uucp (Walt Sullivan) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Does 2.0 have REAL wildcards? (was Re: VLT Help needed) Message-ID: Date: 5 Jan 91 03:02:49 GMT References: <8pwxo8v@Unify.Com> <1990Dec30.163531.22293@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <238@coplex.UUCP> <1991Jan1.052216.672@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <61799@bbn.BBN.COM> Sender: news@bwdls58.UUCP Distribution: na Organization: Bell-Northern Research, Ottawa, Canada Lines: 28 In-reply-to: cosell@bbn.com's message of 1 Jan 91 15:42:27 GMT Dec's TOPS-20 operating system had wildcard expansion built into the operating system, but callable by the program parsing the command line. The COMND JSYS (system call) could be asked to parse all sorts of things - keywordsfrom a table, numbers in bases 2-10, switches from a table, input filespec, output filespec, general (arbitrary) filespec, arbitrary fields, end-of-line, directory name, user name, comma, floating point number, device name, text up to carriage return, date/time, quoted string, string up to one of a set of specified break characters, compare input with a given token, account string, node name and more. Another JSYS (WILD%) allowed comparison of a wildcarded filespec with a non-wildcarded filespec. This allowed any program to make use of a _standard_ set of wildcard parsing and expansion routines, in any desired combination. I'd like to see the Amiga have a wildcard.library that offered similar functionality. I don't think forcing each and every Amiga programmer to invent his/her own set of wildcard parsing/expansion routines (and conventions!) is a good idea. Who knows, I might like '#?', you might like '*', and some other sicko might like '$$ALL-THE-FILES$$' :-) -- Walt Sullivan BITNET: walt@BNR.CA (work) UUCP: walt@orbit.amiga.OCUnix.on.ca (home)