Xref: utzoo comp.arch:21174 comp.os.misc:1609 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!lavaca.uh.edu!menudo.uh.edu!sugar!ficc!peter From: peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.os.misc Subject: Re: Globbing Message-ID: Date: 27 Feb 91 18:21:19 GMT References: <1991Feb18.152347.28521@dgbt.doc.ca> <474@bria> <19217@cbmvax.commodore.com> <5573:Feb2307:19:4491@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> <19336@cbmvax.commodore.com> Reply-To: peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) Followup-To: comp.os.misc Distribution: na Organization: Xenix Support, FICC Lines: 42 Hey, would you please direct your followups out of comp.arch (like I'm doing here)? In article <19336@cbmvax.commodore.com> daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) writes: > Because it's obvious. If I have, for example, two sets of globbed filesystem > arguments, the program can't determine which of the two sets an arbitrary > expanded file name belong to. foo -a this that *.c -b this that *.o -c this that *.1 > If the program does the globbing, dealing > with a command of the form "foo A* B*" is trivial. Shell globbing won't > allow it. Proof by existence, "find". > >Here are some disadvantages: 1. Programs (such as shell scripts) often > >invoke other programs, even with (gasp) arguments. > Sure they do. Works just great under AmigaDOS, where programs glob. No, it doesn't. The usual AmigaDOS subshell environment might be so screwed up that you didn't notice, but the magic I have on occasion had to do to get the right arguments to the right programs in Browser (yes, it's my own program... but it's proven moderately popular even for people using 2.0 (which surprised me... I use the 2.0 workbench myself)) is sufficiently painful that "works great" is not an adequate description. It works, but you pretty much have to be prepared to reverse-engineer quoting and hope the program you call doesn't do something weird. Then you get to the problem that command line options are indistinguishable from filenames... > And if you don't like the wildcard set, you can change them in one > place, and every command line, dialog box, grep-style program, etc. gets > the change. Yes, shared libraries are great. And having a globbing library is great. But that's another point. -- Peter da Silva. `-_-' peter@ferranti.com +1 713 274 5180. 'U` "Have you hugged your wolf today?"