Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!nrl-cmf!ukma!cwjcc!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!osu-cis!att!homxb!hocpa!rusty
From: rusty@hocpa.UUCP (M.W.HADDOCK)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: arp CD command change???
Message-ID: <535@hocpa.UUCP>
Date: 22 Feb 89 04:05:21 GMT
References: <8902131846.AA21527@postgres.Berkeley.EDU> <35960@bbn.COM>
Reply-To: rusty@hocpa.UUCP (91341-M.W.HADDOCK)
Organization: AT&T Consumer Products Laboratories
Lines: 39

In article <35960@bbn.COM> cosell@BBN.COM (Bernie Cosell) writes:
   >I agree with your comments about '.' and '..' wholeheartedly (and was
   >about to post a similar followup when I saw yours).  BUT..  I think
   >you've missed it with the wildcards.  The UNIX 'wildcard standard' is
   >just plain cretinous.  You might ask why UNIX files follow an

It's not Unix per se just the shells so blame the [Unix] shell writers out
there.  Maybe the next new one will contain more regex parsing.  Still, if
you have the csh (or a derivative) or the ksh you've got the square
brackets, [], though not just like egrep uses in that you can say

	ls [a-z]*[ab]

The shell would catch "aa" or "n123b" but, unlike egrep(1), it wouldn't
catch the filenames "b" or "a" now would it?

        And let's not forget the Curly Sisters, left { and right }, have
been quite useful to me with the csh.  Also, how would ^ and $ be used in
parsing filenames???  If you say beginning and end of the filenames you
already have it, albeit implicitly.

        All in all, I can live with the Unix shells' wildcards if you at
least give me them Square Boys, [ & ]. The thing I don't like is the varying
degrees to which regex is used.  "awk"'s list is different from "ed"'s which
is a subset of "vi" (some more modern versions of vi have + notation, which
means 1 or more of the prefixed regex which has been more than handy) all
the way "up" to GnuEmacs which has still more if not all known regex
notations.

        I think I'd die if even just one itsy-bitsy, eeney-weeny portion of
this world started becoming consistent with itself.  [Heavy sigh.....]


					-Rusty-
-- 
Rusty Haddock		{uunet!likewise,att,arpa}!hocpa!rusty
AT&T Consumer Products Laboratories - Human Factors Laboratory
Holmdel, New Joyzey 07733   (201) 834-1023  rusty@hocpa.att.com
** Genius may have its limitations but stupidity is not thus handicapped.