Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site hcrvx1.UUCP Path: utzoo!hcrvax!hcrvx1!hugh From: hugh@hcrvx1.UUCP (Hugh Redelmeier) Newsgroups: net.bugs.usg Subject: basename(1) surprise Message-ID: <1217@hcrvx1.UUCP> Date: Wed, 14-Aug-85 18:11:47 EDT Article-I.D.: hcrvx1.1217 Posted: Wed Aug 14 18:11:47 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 15-Aug-85 07:50:51 EDT Organization: Human Computing Resources, Toronto Lines: 19 Under System V the "suffix" operand of basename is a regular expression (under V7 and 4.2BSD it is a literal string). Unfortunately, this is *not* mentioned in the manual. The most common use of basename is to strip suffixes beginning with dot; if the programmer fails to quote the dot twice (once for the shell, and once for basename's pattern matcher) it will match any character. Thus basename cccc .c yields cc There is a slight hint in the manual in that the sample use of basename has the required quoting (and thus should not work!). Since System V's basename is implemented as a shell script, I guess dollar signs in suffix must be quoted three times. On the other hand, you can read the code even if you do not have a source license. Hugh Redelmeier (416) 922-1937 {utzoo, ihnp4, decvax}!hcr!hugh