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Aucbvax.5203 fa.unix-wizards utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!unix-wizards Sun Nov 15 23:15:17 1981 raw command line >From HOLSTEGE@CIT-20 Sun Nov 15 21:55:13 1981 The UNIX shell command line interpretation is NOT a general mechanism. It assumes quite definitely that every word the user types on a command line is a file name to be considered in the context of the present directory. While a non-insignificant fraction of UNIX commands want filenames on their command line, this is by no means true of every argument to every command. Ideally, the notion of regular expression matching with * ? and [ ] should be applied UNIFORMLY to any kind of argument. For example, the command "finger e*" should finger every user whose name starts with 'e'; the * being expanded in the context of usernames rather than files. The shell takes the easy way out by ASSUMING that MOST arguments refer to files. It is clearly impractical to create a mechanism by which each program tells the shell in what context each of its arguments is to be matched/expanded (though it's done on TOPS 20). My proposal allows those programs which don't deal with files, but want to be sensible about regular expression expansions of other types of arguments, to be written somehow. At present, it is impossible to do so transparently to the user. Everything should be possible somehow. One should not impose arbitrary restrictions on the user just for the sake of some limited idea of uniformity. (end of diatribe)

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