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Date: Mon,  5 Oct 2009 20:09:45 +0100
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From: roger peppe <rogpeppe@gmail.com>
To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net>
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Subject: Re: [9fans] mishandling empty lists - let's fix it
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2009/10/5 John Stalker <stalker@maths.tcd.ie>:
> But you can use regular expressions instead of goofy shell
> matching. =C2=A0Find and ls give you lists of file names and grep
> prunes them for you. =C2=A0Shell command substitution then puts
> them in the right place in the command, or use xargs when
> appropriate. =C2=A0I don't claim that globbing is a horrible evil,
> merely that it is an unnecessary evil.

dodgy in unix where filenames can contain \n.
under plan 9 you have to remember to set ifs to \n only,
which is awkward and error prone.

this stuff is better designed for interactive use than scripting,
but it still does an adequate job provided you remember the pitfalls.
rc is loads better like that than shells with trad semantics.

i like the way i can parse quoted names in the inferno shell.
various p9 utils have been outfitted to print quoted names
but they're only useful interactively without support from rc.