Newsgroups: comp.os.misc
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!lavaca.uh.edu!menudo.uh.edu!nuchat!sugar!ficc!peter
From: peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva)
Subject: Re: Globbing
Message-ID: <5SAA1G5@xds13.ferranti.com>
Reply-To: peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva)
Organization: Xenix Support, FICC
References: <TB6AKE6@xds13.ferranti.com> <KENW.91Mar25203803@skyler.arc.ab.ca>
Date: Wed, 27 Mar 91 19:46:06 GMT

In article <KENW.91Mar25203803@skyler.arc.ab.ca> kenw@skyler.arc.ab.ca (Ken Wallewein) writes:
>    + echo 'You continue a line\
>    - by escaping it with a backslash'
>    You continue a line
>    by escaping it with a backslash

> Good -- except how to continue without including newline?

+ echo Unquoted newlines\
- are simply whitespace.
Unquoted newlines are simply whitespace.

> Here's a
> suggestion: allow escaping _anything_.  It bugs me that csh doesn't respect
> escaping quotes or spaces.

% ls a\ b
a b: No such file or directory
% echo \"\'
"'

I'm not sure this is a good idea, as it does combine two mechanisms. I'd
rather avoid conflicts between quoting and escaping.

>    + echo 'I''m planning on doing globbing like so: [*.c]'
>    I'm planning on doing globbing like so: split.c getline.c bsh.c domagic.c

>   I don't think I like the use of [] though.  No major reasons, just little
> things like it uses two characters instead of one, and isn't
> space-terminated.  I'd prefer a sort of reverse-escape approach that worked
> on a space-delimited string instead of a character, e.g. +*.o*, where "+"
> is the reverse escape.

But that uses two characters too (+ and space) and prevents you from globbing
unambiguously in some contexts.

> I'd like to see some thought given to how you would handle the result of
> globbing on a directory with file names containing "*", leading "-",
> spaces, etc... 

As for special handling of -, I think not. Of course, I could glob to "./...".
-- 
Peter da Silva.  `-_-'  peter@ferranti.com
+1 713 274 5180.  'U`  "Have you hugged your wolf today?"
