From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,e219d94b946dfc26 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news2.google.com!postnews.google.com!8g2000cwh.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: "Adam Beneschan" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Ada.Command_Line and wildcards Date: 23 Feb 2007 11:30:22 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <1172259022.144832.81680@8g2000cwh.googlegroups.com> References: <45dcaed8_6@news.bluewin.ch> <1172132169.423514.271890@s48g2000cws.googlegroups.com> <1172257457.802242.307050@j27g2000cwj.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 66.126.103.122 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" X-Trace: posting.google.com 1172259038 17098 127.0.0.1 (23 Feb 2007 19:30:38 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2007 19:30:38 +0000 (UTC) In-Reply-To: <1172257457.802242.307050@j27g2000cwj.googlegroups.com> User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050922 Fedora/1.7.12-1.3.1,gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: 8g2000cwh.googlegroups.com; posting-host=66.126.103.122; posting-account=cw1zeQwAAABOY2vF_g6V_9cdsyY_wV9w Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:9471 Date: 2007-02-23T11:30:22-08:00 List-Id: On Feb 23, 11:04 am, "Hyman Rosen" wrote: > On Feb 22, 8:15 pm, Robert A Duff > wrote: > > > Yuck -- bad design! > > The designers of UNIX didn't feel that it was necessary for every > program to incorporate a wildcard expander when that could be done > externally. Back then keeping programs small and simple was a virtue. > > > And there's no wildcard that means "all subdirectories, recursively". > > And no wildcard that means "all files that have changed since > yesterday". > > There are an infinite number of things that you might want to specify. > Many of them won't have been thought of when the programs which could > benefit from them are written. That's why it's better to do these > things > externally, and just have one program to modify when you come up with > your new wildcards. But as has been said several times before, the OS could have provided a service that could have been called iteratively to return the file names, one at a time. That's how VMS does it. This arrangement would solve both the problems you mention above---keeping the applications small and simple, and allowing for new types of wildcards without having to change the application. -- Adam