Text File

Aucbvax.5149 fa.unix-wizards utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!unix-wizards Thu Nov 12 21:51:44 1981 argv and command line >From ucsfcgl!sdcarl!dgl@Berkeley Thu Nov 12 21:13:01 1981 One can of course get the bare command line by having the user double-quote the appropriate part of the line. The disadvantage to this is that such programs must be handled separately in the minds of the users, which is too bad.

The real screw is that the shell aborts if it doesn't find a filename match. There is no way for the shell to know whether a program can function as the user intended if the user supplies a filename pattern but there are no files that match. So this is reasonable behavior on the part of the shell (although it can be argued that all programs should protect themselves against funny or nonexistant input anyway).

A special hack would have to be added to the shell, namely, a list of programs which, when named as commands, signals the shell to not expand regular expressions. A mechanism similar to "set path" would do. It would be a wonderful capability to have. The next most obvious question is, how much of the shell's syntax would you suppress? Just filename parsing? Or also the rest of the shell's syntax? Presumably just the filename parsing would be most advantageous.

----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/

This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided:

1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles.

2. The following notice remains appended to each copy:

The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.