From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net>
Date: Mon,  5 Oct 2009 09:30:45 -0400
To: 9fans@9fans.net
Message-ID: <a952dfc50b3ed9932c7f049e2e697626@brasstown.quanstro.net>
In-Reply-To: <<20091005055423.GA14691@nipl.net>>
References: <<20091005055423.GA14691@nipl.net>>
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Subject: Re: [9fans] mishandling empty lists - let's fix it
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 7eb42a2e-ead5-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025

>   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