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From: pfalstad@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Paul John Falstad)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: UNIX mind-set  -> OK, OK!
Message-ID: <5340@idunno.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 14 Jan 91 13:43:35 GMT
References: <11305@lanl.gov> <1991Jan14.013815.11419@ims.alaska.edu> <11314@lanl.gov>
Sender: news@idunno.Princeton.EDU
Organization: Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey
Lines: 44

In article <11314@lanl.gov> jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles) writes:
>Yes, both of the shells that are bundled with versions of UNIX _do_
>automatically trash (that is, 'process') the command line arguments to
>expand wildcards.  Explains why I don't use the bundled command shells
>much.

What shells DO you use, may I ask?

		  This is a choice that _should_ be left to the discretion of the
>utility writer.

This forces the user to remember, for each individual command, whether
or not it processes wildcards.  It also makes the utility writer have to
worry about wildcarding in each program he writes.

Plus, what if some programmer comes up with some brilliant new
wildcard, say one that matches exactly the files you want, every time?
In UNIX he can just incorporate it into a shell, and it will work fine
with the binaries of all existing utilities.  Otherwise, he will have to
recompile all the utilities he uses with this new globbing routine,
or just use this new routine with all future programs he writes.  Then he
gets to remember which ones have the new globbing, and which ones do not.
This is not consistent.

Having once been an Amiga programmer (which handled wildcards in the way
you specify), I can say I greatly prefer the UNIX shells' approach.  It
is not the job of "cat", for example, to process command lines and scan
directories to check for matching files, any more than it is the job of
the shell to catenate files.  In the "one tool = one job" approach, the
shell handles the job of parsing and expanding command lines, and "cat" simply
spits out files without having to scan directories or call any strange
pattern matching library functions.

If you don't want the shell to do wildcard expansion for certain
commands (e.g. find, so that "find . -name *.c -print" works as expected),
you could use an alias involving "set noglob"; also, there are shells
available that let you say "noglob find", which prevents the shell from
doing wildcard expansion whenever the command "find" is involved.

--
"Uh, Air Zalagaza 612, we have engine failure and our port wing is about
to drop off.  We anticipate a crash situation at this time."
The lavatory is engaged.  From within, you hear what could be a pygmy hog
giving birth to an unusually large litter.