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From: roger@celtics.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: more rm insanity
Message-ID: <1901@celtics.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 8-Dec-87 13:28:37 EST
Article-I.D.: celtics.1901
Posted: Tue Dec  8 13:28:37 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 13-Dec-87 09:50:44 EST
References: <1257@boulder.Colorado.EDU> <6840002@hpcllmv.HP.COM>
Reply-To: roger@celtics.UUCP (Roger B.A. Klorese)
Organization: CELERITY (Northeast Area), Framingham, MA
Lines: 44

In article <8145@ism780c.UUCP> mikep@ism780c.UUCP (Michael A. Petonic) writes:
|In article <1895@celtics.UUCP> roger@celtics.UUCP (c'est moi) writes:
|>My point, really, is that we need some way of determining in a command
|>line which patterns are *filenames* - these should be expanded by the
|>shell - and which are *(option patterns, network-node wildcards, etc.)* -
|>things which cannot be expanded or pattern-matched against a directory,
|>and should be passed to the program for expansion.
|
|Hey, wait a minute.  This is easily accomplished... Use the
|backslash.  I know, I know, the backslash is usually located out
|of the way, but that's a wimpy excuse.
|
|
|I couldn't see adding a "feature" like smart expansion and thoroughly
|modifying the shell (and possibly the kernel) just to make things
|slightly simpler for a select few.  The rest of us are used to 
|globbing in the shell and use the backslash when we don't want
|globbing.  No problem.

Yeah, but the question is not when the *user* doesn't want globbing, but
when globbing by the shell is *inappropriate* to the command, and the user
expects wildcards to do pattern matches against *the appropriate pool of
selections*, not against *filenames*.

Explain to a user, please, why the user can get a list of filenames beginning
with "cel" by typing

	ls cel*

...but in order to get a list of adjacent network nodes beginning with "cel",
using the hypothetical "netlist" command, the user must type

	netlist cel\*

...makes no sense to me.  (An even better example would be installations
of products like Technology Concepts' "CommUnity" (alias Celerity's
Accelnet/DNI). Why can I list local and NFS'd files using "ls cel*"
but can only list files on a DECnet-connected system using "dnals cel\*"?)

-- 
 ///==\\   (Your message here...)
///        Roger B.A. Klorese, CELERITY (Northeast Area)
\\\        40 Speen St., Framingham, MA 01701  +1 617 872-1552
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