From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-ID: <8fa6c9f34eddb63062fab1d09781f1cb@hamnavoe.com>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] ls, rc question -- proposed change to rc/glob.c
From: Richard Miller <rm@hamnavoe.com>
In-Reply-To: <4ACCD005-797F-11D8-8706-000A95B984D8@mightycheese.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2004 09:16:36 +0000
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 385cac2a-eacd-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025

> you're proposing making the shell differ from every other
> program that reads directories.  that seems like a bad idea.

The shell is the only program which applies a regular expression
match to the directory entries as it reads them.  If this is a
bad idea, it has a respectable history:

"Putting this expansion mechanism into the shell has several advantages:
the code only appears once, so no space is wasted and commands in general
need take no special action; the algorithm is certain to be applied
uniformly."  (D.M.Ritchie, "Unix Time-Sharing System: A Retrospective",
BSTJ July-Aug 1978)