Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!aiai!richard From: richard@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Richard Tobin) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: UNIX mind-set -> OK, OK! Message-ID: <3942@skye.ed.ac.uk> Date: 15 Jan 91 16:02:59 GMT References: <1991Jan14.013815.11419@ims.alaska.edu> <11314@lanl.gov> <5340@idunno.Princeton.EDU> <1991Jan14.170115.17178@Think.COM> Reply-To: richard@aiai.UUCP (Richard Tobin) Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland Lines: 25 In article bson@ai.mit.edu (Jan Brittenson) writes: > The Unix approach have its advantages sometimes. Assume you have >the files "L19901200.axx772" and "L19910100.bxx19974". If you wish >overwrite the second file with the first it makes sense to use > mv L*72 L*74 This sort of thing is a common, but rather dangerous hack. The purpose of globbing is specify filenames by a pattern. If you want to save time typing long filenames then the right tool is some form of filename completion. Their are now both sh- and csh- compatible shells that provide this. It would, of course, be nice if the shell could complete things other than filenames. (I used to have a file named "everything" in my home directory :-) Something I might implement sometime is a file describing (probably rather poorly) the syntax of common unix commands, which would be read by tcsh (or whatever) to allow command-sensitive completion. -- Richard -- Richard Tobin, JANET: R.Tobin@uk.ac.ed AI Applications Institute, ARPA: R.Tobin%uk.ac.ed@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk Edinburgh University. UUCP: ...!ukc!ed.ac.uk!R.Tobin