Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!tness7!tness1!sugar!peter
From: peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: CLI/shells
Summary: Can't you look at the big picture?
Message-ID: <1974@sugar.UUCP>
Date: 13 May 88 11:14:18 GMT
References: <8805092047.AA18301@cory.Berkeley.EDU>
Organization: Sugar Land UNIX - Houston, TX
Lines: 34

In article ... dillon@CORY.BERKELEY.EDU (Matt Dillon) writes:
  [ I said something about using "#?" instead of "*?"...

> 	Huh?  Where'd that come from?  '*' means 'match anything'.  There
> never was, and never will be a '?' after it, unless you want 
> 'match anything but it had better be at least one character', as in:
> charlie*?  would NOT match charlie, but would match charlie<anything>

Matt, "#?" is a 'name'. a shorthand for referring to AmigaDOS style
wildcards. "*?" is a name, too. It's a shorthand for referring to CP/M
style wildcards. UNIX style ones are much more complex than either:
since they include charsets, alternates, and so on.

Anyway. The point I was making is that AmigaDOS style wildcards may take
a couple of extra keystrokes, but they're a lot more general because
# is a closure operator, instead of a wildcard. It can be used as a wild
card, or it can be used to handle more complex cases.

* also has the disadvantage that it conflicts with AmigaDOS usage:

	1> COPY * to Filename.
	2> COPY My* Disk:Filename to Your* Disk:

It's already overloaded. # is the standard. Please stick to it. There is
an excellent wildcard handler witten by Jeff Lydiatt that I use extensively.
Not only does it handle the regular stuff, it also handles sets and
alternations much like UNIX (though the syntax is different):

I use "#?.(c|h)|Makefile" quite a bit when moving programs around. It's
equivalent to the csh "{*.[ch],Makefile}"
-- 
-- Peter da Silva      `-_-'      ...!hoptoad!academ!uhnix1!sugar!peter
-- "Have you hugged your U wolf today?" ...!bellcore!tness1!sugar!peter
-- Disclaimer: These aren't mere opinions, these are *values*.