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Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2007 21:30:26 +0200
From: Niklas Holsti <niklas.holsti@nospam.please>
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Subject: Re: Ada.Command_Line and wildcards
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Date: 2007-02-22T21:30:26+02:00
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Markus E Leypold wrote:
> Jean-Pierre Rosen <rosen@adalog.fr> writes:
> 
> 
>>Ludovic Brenta a �crit :
>>
>>>There are three such "other functions":
>>>$ cat '*.ads *.adb' | wc -l > loc.txt
>>>$ cat "*.ads *.adb" | wc -l > loc.txt
>>>$ cat \*.ads \*.adb | wc -l > loc.txt
>>>So could you please explain why you think the Unix behaviour is
>>>"wrong"?
>>>
>>
>>No, that's from the user's side, not from the program's side. It
>>should be up to the program to decide whether "*" is to be interpreted
>>as a wild-card or not.
> 
> 
> Actually it ist. In 
> 
>   find . -name '*.txt' 
> 
> the program 'find' decides to do the wildcard expansion on '*'. The
> wildcard expansion the shell does, is just an additional service. You
> can just not use it, by enclosing every word on the command line in
> "'".

Moreover the shell's use of pathname expansion is usually optional and 
user-configurable. For example, under the "bash" shell the command "set 
-f" turns pathname expansion off, so all wildcard characters in later 
commands are passed unexpanded into command arguments even if not quoted.

I agree with Markus that the Unix-style division of command-line 
management between the shell and the program is sensible. Of course an 
application should also be able to scan directories to find files with 
names that match a given pattern. In Ada 2005 the new predefined package 
Ada.Directories provides the tools for this.

-- 
Niklas Holsti
Tidorum Ltd
niklas holsti tidorum fi
       .      @       .