Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!nosc!ucsd!ucsdhub!hp-sdd!hplabs!hpda!hpcuhb!hpcllla!hpclisp!hpclscu!shankar
From: shankar@hpclscu.HP.COM (Shankar Unni)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: redirection before wildcards
Message-ID: <670021@hpclscu.HP.COM>
Date: 10 Jun 88 01:01:16 GMT
References: <16101@brl-adm.ARPA>
Organization: HP NSG/ISD Computer Language Lab
Lines: 12

>    It's pretty well known that commands like "grep whatever * > out" can
>    cause infinate loops, because C-shell will create the file "out"
>    before expanding the asterisk wildcard, and grep never reaches EOF
>    once it reaches the file "out".
> 
> Try `grep whatever * > .out'. Small consolation if you didn't :-)

But, for curiosity's sake, why exactly are redirections performed *before*
wildcard expansions?  For "historical" ( :-> ) reasons only? Or is there a
grander design behind it?

--
Shankar.