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From: mwm@eris.BERKELEY.EDU (Mike (Don't have strength to leave) Meyer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Pattern Matching & documentation
Message-ID: <1860@jade.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Tue, 9-Dec-86 02:12:44 EST
Article-I.D.: jade.1860
Posted: Tue Dec  9 02:12:44 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 9-Dec-86 11:16:59 EST
References: <954@blia.BLI.COM> <1731@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> <3237@curly.ucla-cs.UCLA.EDU> <3135@ece-csc.UUCP> <7527@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Sender: usenet@jade.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: mwm@eris.BERKELEY.EDU (Mike (Don't have strength to leave) Meyer)
Organization: Missionaria Phonibalonica
Lines: 29

In article <7527@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> dpz@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU (David P. Zimmerman) writes:
>>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.
>
>That's an interesting hack, but a hack nonetheless.  Lord knows we
>have enough problems with AmigaDOS without having to introduce hacks
>into it - leave the file status bits for the status of the file.

We looked at doing something like that for Unix. It'd work better for
AmigaDOS (since nothing uses the rwx bits yets), but it still suffers
from wanting to glob against things other than files.

>Of course, now I've got to give my own idea.  Make a system call that
>given a wildcard will return the appropriate expansion.  You still
>have ease of wildcarding for the programmer, and yet also have
>consistency for the user.  No hacks, no muss, no fuss, and a lot less
>work for the OS, which only has to do expansion when asked to.

Right idea, but not quite done right. The routine belongs in a shared
library, not in the OS (with the note that AmigaDOS/C doesn't handle
shared libraries well, of course!). Cramming everything into the OS
produces things like 4BSD: bloated (Berkeleyphiles don't get upset;
V the system isn't any better.)

So how about it? Matt, want to convert your.lib into a shared library,
and put the regexp code into it? I can even provide PD regexp code.

	<mike