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From: telam@pyrps5.pyramid.com (Thomas Elam)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Does 2.0 have REAL wildcards? (was Re: VLT Help needed)
Message-ID: <139983@pyramid.pyramid.com>
Date: 5 Jan 91 06:43:31 GMT
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Distribution: na
Organization: Pyramid Technology Corporation, Mountain View
Lines: 35

In article <WALT.91Jan4220249@bcarh133.uucp> walt@bcarh133.uucp (Walt Sullivan) writes:
>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.

Maybe even more than one (e.g. unix_shell_pattern.library and
amiga_shell_pattern.library) AND/OR switches to the library to change
global AND/OR local selection of pattern types.  (I don't know which I
would like better, alternate libraries or switches to a single
library.)

>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)