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Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!lll-lcc!pyramid!voder!blia!heather
From: heather@blia.BLI.COM (Heather Mackinnon)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: expansion of *FOO.* = *.*   ?!?
Message-ID: <2575@blia.BLI.COM>
Date: Wed, 29-Apr-87 12:42:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: blia.2575
Posted: Wed Apr 29 12:42:55 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 2-May-87 05:26:05 EDT
References: <5734@shemp.UCLA.EDU>
Distribution: world
Organization: Britton Lee, Los Gatos, CA
Lines: 17
Summary: * expands to ????????

In article <5734@shemp.UCLA.EDU>, flowers@CS.UCLA.EDU writes:
> 
> Why does the fact that DOS treats *FOO.* (as in "DIR *FOO.*") the same
> as "*.*" remain unfixed?

DOS treats * as ???????? in the filename and as ??? in the extension.
This means that *FOO.* becomes ????????FOO.???.  Since DOS only considers
the first eight characters of a filename significant, it tosses FOO away
and matches *FOO.* to everything.

> Does anyone know of a patch to fix this?

If you want true regular expression processing, you'll need a more UNIX
-like command processor.  MS doesn't consider this a bug; it's stated
quite clearly in the DOS documentation.

Heather Mackinnon