Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!decwrl!pa.dec.com!bacchus!mwm From: mwm@pa.dec.com (Mike (My Watch Has Windows) Meyer) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.introduction Subject: Re: Wildcards in the CLI Message-ID: Date: 7 May 91 18:02:30 GMT References: <1991Apr25.100919.21595@fwi.uva.nl> <21179@cbmvax.commodore.com> Sender: news@pa.dec.com (News) Organization: Missionaria Phonibalonica Lines: 47 In-Reply-To: alex@bilver.uucp's message of Tue, 7 May 91 00:30:43 GMT In article <1991May7.003043.8751@bilver.uucp> alex@bilver.uucp (Alex Matulich) writes: That's why I use the ARP commands. They give you the best of both worlds. If ARP can reasonably support * (and in a consistent manner, yet), why can't AmigaDOS? ARP can't reasonably support "*". It can only try, and fail. You see, AmigaDOS uses "*" to mean "the window the is typing in". The third time I typed "copy * filename" to cram text into a file, and then had to watch the ARP copy move every file in my current directory into filename, I deinstalled arp. In article <1991May7.003043.8751@bilver.uucp> alex@bilver.uucp (Alex Matulich) writes: >Copy files [to] [file/dir] > ^^^^ why the f*** ? Because one could want to specify the parameters in a different order. For example, "copy to destination from source". For utilities that generate command lines, this is what makes the multi-source-file version copy work reasonably. For instance, on unix, to move all the .c files out of a directory requires exec'ing one cp per file, even though cp takes multiple arguments. You do: find . -name '*.c' -exec cp '{}' dest \; If Unix had an AmigaDOS 2.0 copy, you could do it with a single invocation of copy as: find . -name '*.c' -print | xargs copy to dest If you don't have (or don't like) the unix tools, you can get treewalk and do (starburst on): treewalk filter "name == '*.c'" copy to dest with the same result.