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From: erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net>
To: 9fans@9fans.net
Subject: Re: [9fans] mishandling empty lists - let's fix it
Date: Mon,  5 Oct 2009 09:30:45 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <a952dfc50b3ed9932c7f049e2e697626@brasstown.quanstro.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <<20091005055423.GA14691@nipl.net>>

>   grep foo -- *
>
> will still not work because rc's globbing also fears zero and returns the
> pattern instead of an empty list if there are no matches.

i used to think that was a misfeature.
in college i wrote a shell that elided
failed globs in the argument list.

the problem is that people assume that
failed globs generate an error, e.g.
	cat «glob pattern» >[2=] || echo cat failed
i didn't redesign the system, so that would
hang with my shell.

if we follow your redesign of unix, we
would never get an error because
	cat *
does nothing and wouldn't be an error
at all.  one would need to write
	x = *
	if(~ $#* 0)
		echo cat failed
	if not
		cat $x
that seems less attractive to me.

- erik



       reply	other threads:[~2009-10-05 13:30 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 55+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
     [not found] <<20091005055423.GA14691@nipl.net>
2009-10-05 13:30 ` erik quanstrom [this message]
2009-10-05 16:13   ` Russ Cox
2009-10-05 19:24     ` Sam Watkins
2009-10-05 19:31       ` erik quanstrom
2009-10-05 21:04       ` John Stalker
2009-10-05 22:13         ` Jason Catena
2009-10-06 10:10           ` lucio
2009-10-06  2:22         ` ron minnich
2009-10-06  4:37           ` erik quanstrom
2009-10-06  4:50             ` ron minnich
2009-10-06  6:40           ` John Stalker
2009-10-06 17:45             ` Brian L. Stuart
2009-10-06 18:00               ` John Stalker
2009-10-06 18:27                 ` ron minnich
2009-10-07  8:30                   ` John Stalker
2009-10-07 11:05                     ` roger peppe
2009-10-06  8:40           ` matt
2009-10-06 16:50             ` John Stalker
2009-10-06 17:15               ` Jason Catena
2009-10-06 17:50             ` Tim Newsham
2009-10-06 19:27               ` John Stalker
2009-10-06 20:10                 ` Jason Catena
2009-10-05 21:35       ` Russ Cox
     [not found] <<200910071414.aa02318@salmon.maths.tcd.ie>
2009-10-07 13:36 ` erik quanstrom
2009-10-07 14:02   ` W B Hacker
     [not found] <<200910070930.aa64725@salmon.maths.tcd.ie>
2009-10-07 12:14 ` erik quanstrom
2009-10-07 13:14   ` John Stalker
     [not found] <<200910060740.aa94573@salmon.maths.tcd.ie>
2009-10-06 12:59 ` erik quanstrom
     [not found] <<646955677faa922172207300b93ff6ea@hamnavoe.com>
2009-10-04 18:39 ` erik quanstrom
2009-10-03 16:03 Sam Watkins
2009-10-03 17:01 ` Rob Pike
2009-10-03 18:31   ` Sam Watkins
2009-10-03 18:56     ` Rob Pike
2009-10-03 19:05       ` blstuart
2009-10-03 19:18         ` hiro
2009-10-03 20:31     ` Steve Simon
2009-10-05 16:08     ` John Stalker
2009-10-05 16:24       ` erik quanstrom
2009-10-05 17:20         ` John Stalker
2009-10-05 19:09           ` roger peppe
2009-10-03 18:46 ` Bakul Shah
2009-10-03 19:11   ` Sam Watkins
2009-10-04  4:12     ` lucio
2009-10-04  7:17       ` Sam Watkins
2009-10-04  9:18         ` lucio
2009-10-05  6:20           ` Sam Watkins
2009-10-05  6:53             ` Federico G. Benavento
2009-10-04 10:46         ` Richard Miller
2009-10-06  6:59           ` Uriel
2009-10-06 12:01             ` Jacob Todd
2009-10-04 10:59         ` sqweek
2009-10-05  5:54           ` Sam Watkins
2009-10-05 11:23           ` matt
2009-10-04 10:18 ` Charles Forsyth
2009-10-04 10:26   ` lucio

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