Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!lavaca.uh.edu!menudo.uh.edu!sugar!ficc!peter From: peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: comp.os.misc Subject: Re: Globbing Message-ID: Date: 15 Mar 91 19:51:50 GMT References: <17602@lanl.gov> Reply-To: peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) Organization: Xenix Support, FICC Lines: 34 In article <17602@lanl.gov> jlg@cochiti.lanl.gov (Jim Giles) writes: > Please read the original post again. The mnemonic purpose of quoting > is to _prevent_ globbing. But, in _both_ these cases, I _WANT_ globbing. No, you want wildcarding in another context. That's not globbing. > I just want it done in a different context. Further mnemonic violence > occurs when I want to pass a special character through to the other > context - _your_ "solution" requires multiple quoting - _BLETCH!!_ As in "grep 'include.*\.h' *.c"? But your solution requires knowing the behaviour of the program you're passing the argument to the other context. And when I'm calling it directly from another program (say, "mail") I have to add a bunch of quoting I'm not putting in now... and *that* is a security risk... one I've exploited in older HDB uucp to demonstrate the problem. Quote once and for all, with a consistent syntax. > Both the tool and the user _know_ what the arguments to a given tool > mean. The shell _DOES_NOT_. It is foolish, therefore, to have the > shell do the globbing. Period. No, the tool does not always know what the arguments mean. Particularly when the "user" is another program. Why should I have todepend on hundreds of programmers writing hundreds of unique tools guessing what globbing is needed: the USER should be the only entity specifying when globbing is going to be done. To paraphrase: it is foolish, therefore, to have each separate and unique tool do the globbing. Period. -- Peter da Silva. `-_-' peter@ferranti.com +1 713 274 5180. 'U` "Have you hugged your wolf today?"