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From: Hyman Rosen <hyrosen@mail.com>
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Subject: Re: Ada.Command_Line.Argument_Count question
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NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2009 13:03:15 UTC
Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2009 09:03:10 -0400
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Date: 2009-09-23T09:03:10-04:00
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Adam Beneschan wrote:
> "Unix" is not a synonym for "Bourne shell".

Just to make things clear, all "normal" UNIX (and Linux)
shells will expand '*.adb' into a list of files if there
are files in the current directory which match the pattern.
They differ in what they do if there are no such files.
Bourne shell and its variants (ksh, bash, etc.) will pass
'*.adb' literally as an argument to the command. Csh and
its variants (tcsh, zsh, etc.) will issue an error message
and not execute the command at all. Some shells also allow
you to configure this behavior to taste.

For formalists who wonder why such a pattern shouldn't
"expand" to nothing when no files match, it's because UNIX
commands tend to be written to either process a list of files
or else standard input when no files are supplied.