Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!ucsd!ucbvax!hplabs!nsc!pyramid!cbmvax!daveh From: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech Subject: Re: Wildcards Message-ID: <10142@cbmvax.commodore.com> Date: 13 Mar 90 22:48:39 GMT References: <1213@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca> <13664@nigel.udel.EDU> <1414@watserv1.waterloo.edu> <13677@nigel.udel.EDU> <5383@sugar.hackercorp.com> Reply-To: daveh@cbmvax (Dave Haynie) Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA Lines: 33 In article <5383@sugar.hackercorp.com> peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) writes: >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": That's actually not a bad solution -- programs often don't want the shell to expand wildcards (DiskSalv for one, which wants the pattern passed in unexpanded, to match against anything it finds on the disk). Yet, for most operations, who's actually expanding the wildcards isn't an issue, at least until the shell runs into command-line length restrictions (like csh does all the time for me when I'm ZOOing things under UNIX) or the command doesn't have built-in expansion (like ZOO under AmigaDOS). Hopefully AmigaOS V1.4 will help out here with an extended and built-in wildcard parser. However, if anyone's interested in basic matching of standard AmigaDOS wildcards, I'll make the routines used by DiskSalv available. They compile under Lattice V5.02, but confuse the optimizer. They're less than 1K or so of code, and pretty easy to use. > _--_|\ Peter da Silva . >/ \ >\_.--._/ I haven't lost my mind, it's backed up on tape somewhere! > v "Have you hugged your wolf today?" `-_-' -- Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Systems Engineering) "The Crew That Never Rests" {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: hazy BIX: hazy Too much of everything is just enough