Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!decwrl!pa.dec.com!bacchus!mwm From: mwm@raven.relay.pa.dec.com (Mike (My Watch Has Windows) Meyer) Newsgroups: comp.os.misc Subject: Re: UNIX mind-set -> OK, OK! Message-ID: Date: 16 Jan 91 21:13:42 GMT References: <1991Jan14.170115.17178@Think.COM> <11390@lanl.gov> <5371@idunno.Princeton.EDU> <1991Jan15.053904.2881@Think.COM> <1991Jan15.222146.9697@lingua.cltr.uq.OZ.AU> Sender: news@pa.dec.com (News) Organization: Missionaria Phonibalonica Lines: 42 In-Reply-To: root@lingua.cltr.uq.OZ.AU's message of 15 Jan 91 22:21:46 GMT In article <1991Jan15.222146.9697@lingua.cltr.uq.OZ.AU> root@lingua.cltr.uq.OZ.AU (Hulk Hogan) writes: I disagree. Although it *sounds* right when someone says that a program should glob it's arguments, so that it only globs filename args, it won't work in practice. Gee - I feel that way about having the shell do globbing. It makes writing shell scripts that want to glob correctly - especially when they pass different arguments to different internal commands, some of which should be globbed, and some of which shouldn't - nearly impossible. But it can be done. Of course, both arguments fall down when one examines the real world - Unix proves that having the shell glob works in practice. TOPS20 (among a large number of others) prove that having commands use a system-supplied glob routine work in practice. The only possibility would be a glob(3) routine used by all commands for consistent globbing, which all vendors would have to keep functionally identical (no value adding!) for the sake of the poor users. Sorry, wrong answer. The routine is in a shared library. Each vendor can add whatever value they want. Every command on the system gets that added value. Users don't have to worry about it being inconsistent unless they go to a different version of the OS - but you have that problem for _all_ value added features. Maybe you have filenames with wildcard characters in them, or programs which require you to be able to send in "?", "*" or "[" characters on the command line? I don't. You don't use grep, sed or awk? I find myself typing regular expressions (which look like file globbing expressions, only they're different) on the command line regularly. Trying to use those expressions as arguments in a shell script is always an interesting experience.