12 Dec
2011
12 Dec
'11
10:49 a.m.
[Please don't use paragraph-length lines.]
About the only thing that the various Unix shells do
is that a file
name starting with a '.' are treated special (actually it's 'ls' that
does).
Most shells do too; for example, "*foo*" usually will not match a file
named ".xfooy", because of the leading dot.
What I don't understand is the belief that the
unix wildcard is
difficult.
I don't understand why, but apparently it _is_ difficult for a lot of
people.
Yes, to build more complex patterns you need to
understand regular
expressions
Shell glob patterns aren't regular expressions, at least not in any
shell I've ever seen.
I'd argue in many cases that what some folks call
progress is really
a step backwards. Many powerful concepts were developed early and
what some folks call progress is a "dumbing down" and removal of
features because they couldn't be explained to the masses easily.
When you're building stuf for the masses, that _is_ progress. And
that's what a lot of people are doing.
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