Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!cbmvax!daveh
From: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.introduction
Subject: Re: Wildcards in the CLI
Message-ID: <21179@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Date: 2 May 91 23:09:50 GMT
References: <1991Apr16.155231.18782@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> <7384@munnari.oz.au> <6512@bwdls58.bnr.ca> <20893@cbmvax.commodore.com> <1991Apr25.100919.21595@fwi.uva.nl>
Reply-To: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie)
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA
Lines: 30

In article <1991Apr25.100919.21595@fwi.uva.nl> groenewo@fwi.uva.nl (Ferry van het Groenewoud) writes:

>MY problem with the #? wildcard is, that it are TWO characters, and, as everyone
>figured out, a * is only ONE character. Add to this the unhandy place they are
>at on the keyboard, makes the use of it at least twice as unhandy as using *.

I never found it a problem myself, I suppose that's a matter of personal
perference.  I do find the additional power of the Amiga wildcard language
relative to that of other systems worth any extra effort involved.  Of course,
I've been using this system since 1985.

>Something else that is ofcourse very annoying about wildcards is that not all
>doscommands handle them but I believe that has been fixed in 2.0 (hasn't it?!)

Wildcard support prior to 2.0 was rather annoying, I think that was a generally
recognized failing of the older systems.  Wildcards, and command arguments 
were inconsistent between commands.  And each command had to contain it's own
wildcard code, which wasn't even available in a link library for use by 
programmers outside of Commodore.  However, in 2.0, things are much, much, much
better in terms of both wildcard support and consistency in the DOS commands.
And pattern matching is now a dos.library function call, which means that all
programmers have access to this, anywhere they want it.

>Ferry van het Groenewoud             \__/  groenewo@fwi.uva.nl  


-- 
Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests"
   {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh      PLINK: hazy     BIX: hazy
      "That's me in the corner, that's me in the spotlight" -R.E.M.