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From: ewhac@well.UUCP (Leo 'Bols Ewhac' Schwab)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: AmigaDos vs Unix wildcards/pathnames
Message-ID: <11038@well.UUCP>
Date: 21 Mar 89 10:26:06 GMT
References: <352@sagpd1.UUCP> <6294@cbmvax.UUCP> <11242@ut-emx.UUCP> <45@xenlink.UUCP> <3645@sugar.hackercorp.com>
Reply-To: ewhac@well.UUCP (Leo 'Bols Ewhac' Schwab)
Organization: International Revolutionary Amiga Nation (IRAN)
Lines: 34
Quote: "This is stupid."  -- Vila
	"When did that ever stop us?"  -- Avon

[ "Ours is not to reason why..."  -- Oliver North ]

	My turn.

	As a person who was exposed to UNIX before AmigaDOS, my opinion is
that wildcard expansion belongs in the shell.  This has a number of
advantages.

	Wildcard expansion need not be done inside the application.  Thus,
the writer need not look for and deal with special cases on the command
line.  Also, wildcard expansion code will not appear in every copy of every
application launched (even with a wildcard expander in a shared library, you
still have to write code to call it).  This saves code and disk space.

	One single set of wildcards can be agreed upon and adhered to, since
all applications will see is a long string of command line arguments.  Thus,
multiple standards (#? vs. *) are avoided, and the user need not have to
remember which program is using which set of wildcards this week.

	It was suggested long ago that the amount of disk gronking that a
shell-based wildcard expander would be excessive.  Well, what would the
launched command be doing if you handed it a wildcard?

	The only disadvantage I can see with this is that, with large
directories, an expanded wildcard might exceed the 255 character limit of
BCPL strings.

	IMHO, TINAR, and all that...

_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
Leo L. Schwab -- The Guy in The Cape	INET: well!ewhac@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU
 \_ -_		Recumbent Bikes:	UUCP: pacbell > !{well,unicom}!ewhac
O----^o	      The Only Way To Fly.	      hplabs / (pronounced "AE-wack")
"Work FOR?  I don't work FOR anybody!  I'm just having fun."  -- The Doctor