Re: Ada.Command_Line.Argument_Count question

[Adam Beneschan <adam@irvine.com>]

On Sep 23, 5:31 pm, Björn Persson <bj...@xn--rombobjrn-67a.se> wrote:

> You might argue that programs that have their own pattern matching features
> should use a different set of special characters to distinguish the patterns
> from those that the shell expands, but that's a bad idea in my opinion.
> Having multiple different syntaxes makes it hard to remember when to use
> which syntax.

Multiple syntaxes is a bad idea, but I've always wanted a way to add a
flag to certain executables to tell the shell "don't expand wildcards
when running this executable".  Then you could actually write a
command of the sort that exists on other OS's:

   rename *.ada *.adb

(The shell wouldn't expand either parameter.  The "rename" program
would be responsible for searching for files that matched the first
parameter.  Ideally, this would be accomplished by a library routine
that the shell also uses when it does expand.)

                                    -- Adam