Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site brl-tgr.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!sdcsvax!sdcrdcf!hplabs!hao!seismo!brl-tgr!gwyn From: gwyn@brl-tgr.ARPA (Doug Gwyn) Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards Subject: Re: How should command substitution (`...`) work? Message-ID: <6265@brl-tgr.ARPA> Date: Sat, 1-Dec-84 01:31:28 EST Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.6265 Posted: Sat Dec 1 01:31:28 1984 Date-Received: Tue, 4-Dec-84 05:44:20 EST References: <332@stcvax.UUCP> Organization: Ballistic Research Lab Lines: 9 > p `egrep -l pattern *` > > It seems more natural to me that the shell should (silently) not > run a pipeline if any command substitutions in it fail. The Bourne shell "never" fails on a file pattern; if there is no match it just uses the pattern itself. There was at one time a shell variable called FILEMATCH that one could set to obtain a different behavior, but there was not much enthusiasm for this so it went away.