Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!texbell!sugar!peter From: peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech Subject: Wildcards Message-ID: <5383@sugar.hackercorp.com> Date: 13 Mar 90 14:55:57 GMT References: <1213@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca> <13664@nigel.udel.EDU> <1414@watserv1.waterloo.edu> <13677@nigel.udel.EDU> Reply-To: peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) Organization: Sugar Land Unix - Houston Lines: 25 We have on one side the folks saying "I can't trust programmers to put wildcard matching into programs". We have on the other side the folks saying "I can't trust programmers to properly quote shell arguments". Perhaps the solution is to have a syntax in the shell that says "expand these wildcards yourself": 1> set quotewild=on 1> frobnitz [#?.bork] ; This expands #?.bork in the shell. 1> frobnitz #?.bork ; This depends on frobnitz to do the expansion. 1> set quotewild=off 1> frobnitz #?.bork ; Now it expands #? in the shell. 1> set wildcards=unix 1> frobnitz *.bork ; For the folks who don't like pure closures. Scripts would probably run with quotewild on by default, and the more powerful amiga-style wildcards, and interactive shells would turn quotewild off and use the terser unix-style wildcards. -- _--_|\ Peter da Silva . / \ \_.--._/ I haven't lost my mind, it's backed up on tape somewhere! v "Have you hugged your wolf today?" `-_-'