Re: Ada.Command_Line and wildcards

["Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>]

On Thu, 22 Feb 2007 16:15:40 +0100, Ludovic Brenta wrote:

> Jean-Pierre Rosen  writes:
>> Maciej Sobczak a �crit :
>>> Jean-Pierre Rosen wrote:
>>>
>>>> Too bad that Unix behaviour was wrong in the first place...
>>>
>>> I don't understand. Shell uses some special characters to make it
>>> easier for the user to type commands [1]. Wildcards are just an
>>> example. Consider this:
>>>
>>> $ cat *.ads *.adb | wc -l > loc.txt
>>>
>>> If you claim that * above should be passed "as is" to the program
>>> (cat), so that the program can figure out on itself what to do with
>>> it, then you might as well argue that the program should figure out
>>> *everything* above. Obviously, that wouldn't be funny.
>>>
>> I claim it would be easier to provide a function that expands
>> parameters, than to force expansion. Or maybe just provide another
>> function that provides the raw parameters.
> 
> 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"?

It is wrong because it does not clearly define what is a "command line,"
which makes almost impossible for an application to handle (parse) "command
lines." One could try to argue that there is no need to do it at all, but
that is clearly not the case.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de