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From: mark@ece-csc.UUCP (Mark Lanzo)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Pattern Matching & documentation
Message-ID: <3135@ece-csc.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 3-Dec-86 19:48:15 EST
Article-I.D.: ece-csc.3135
Posted: Wed Dec  3 19:48:15 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 5-Dec-86 10:37:42 EST
References: <954@blia.BLI.COM> <1731@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> <3237@curly.ucla-cs.UCLA.EDU>
Reply-To: mark@ece-csc.UUCP (Mark Lanzo)
Organization: The loony bin
Lines: 47

to quote pieces from a couple of previous postings:

>For those who don't think per-argument pattern matching is a win,
>consider "finger *" and "finger *@*.berkeley.edu". 

and 

>Ok. Whats wrong with finger \*@\*.berkeley.edu or
>finger "*@*.berkeley.edu" or
>set noglob
>finger *@*.berkeley.edu
>unset noglob
>?

Well, I agree that the above works, but it sure is a crude way of doing
things.  Also, the filename expansion et al are supposed to be making the
user interface EASIER to work with, and more regular.  Suddenly having to
add escape codes tends to defeat the purpose -- and is particularly 
confusing to neophyte users who don't readily understand these intricacies.
The Amiga folks really ought to work on making the user interface better
and easier to use, not more cryptic.  There are lots of rough spots in the
CLI interface which really should be improved upon; and in 99% of the
cases could be without a great deal of difficulty.  Anyways ...

An idea:  if there are any spare bits in a file's "protection"
code (read/write/execute/delete/archive/whatever...), maybe one could be
defined as a "Filename expansion" bit.

I agree with the crowd wanting the filename expansion to be done automatically
by the system since it would contribute greatly to a uniform user interface
and makes writing application a good deal easier at the same time.
It seems silly to have to include gobs of filename expanding code in every
program I write which can accept a filename as an argument (which is
probably most programs).

Still, it would be nice to be able to disable the filename expansion for 
a few special programs (such as Unix "finger").

So, what if the system by default expanded filenames on the command line
before calling a program, UNLESS some special bit in the file's access
code was set?

Just a thought ....


      -- Mark --
      flames to /dev/null please!