From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: John Stalker <stalker@maths.tcd.ie>
To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net>
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	<20091003183127.GC15021@nipl.net>
	<200910051708.aa33544@salmon.maths.tcd.ie>
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Date: Mon,  5 Oct 2009 18:20:23 +0100
Message-ID: <200910051820.ab25950@salmon.maths.tcd.ie>
Subject: Re: [9fans] mishandling empty lists - let's fix it
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 7f072012-ead5-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025

> i think this is all a bit dramatic.
...
> if i could roll back time, i would push
> for regular expressions instead of the
> goofy shell matching.  then knuth could
> have to say that unix is 29 definitions of
> regular expressions living under one roof.
> :-)

But you can use regular expressions instead of goofy shell
matching.  Find and ls give you lists of file names and grep
prunes them for you.  Shell command substitution then puts
them in the right place in the command, or use xargs when
appropriate.  I don't claim that globbing is a horrible evil,
merely that it is an unnecessary evil.

--
John Stalker
School of Mathematics
Trinity College Dublin
tel +353 1 896 1983
fax +353 1 896 2282