Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!decvax!watmath!egisin
From: egisin@watmath.waterloo.edu (Eric Gisin)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: redirection before wildcards
Message-ID: <19501@watmath.waterloo.edu>
Date: 16 Jun 88 00:11:57 GMT
References: <16101@brl-adm.ARPA> <670021@hpclscu.HP.COM>
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 13

In article <670021@hpclscu.HP.COM>, shankar@hpclscu.HP.COM (Shankar Unni) writes:
> 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?

It is probably due to the way redirection is implemented.
If you use one algorithm for redirection, whether it be applied to
executable commands, built-ins, or control statements, then
you perform redirection before you have determined the type of command.
Argument and assignment expansion occurs after you have determined
you have a simple-command.

I haven't checked whether this is true for the SysV shell,
but it is the way I implemented things.