On Sat, Apr 18, 2015 at 09:09:34AM -0400, Karl Dahlke wrote:
> The problem that the glob check solves is subtle,
> and it only has to do with error messages.
> Imagine you want to read a file into the current buffer.
> You use the shorthand
> 
> r z*
> 
> because you believe this will grab the correct file.
> But z* doesn't match anything.
> Since we are globbing you get the error message
> 
> shell pattern doesn't match any files
> 
> or something like that.
> Now if you're sure the file is called z*, or even zz,
> and you type
> 
> r zz
> 
> you don't want to get that error message.
> But that's what you get if you glob.
> I know that you didn't want to glob, and didn't mean to glob,
> and I give the other error message
> 
> cannot open file zz
> 
> Other than clear error messages corresponding to what you are trying to do,
> the check probably doesn't change a thing.

I think I'd rather clean up the error message and remove the checking tbh,
something like:
"No files found matching z*"
That way we just glob and it works. Plus,
if I'm using variable expansion and globbing I get to see what I actually globbed.

At the moment, if I have a variable $filepath which I think is set to say
"/mnt/data/filestore/files/packages/descriptions/"
and I know that I've got a file called zfs_latest_version.txt under that
directory I'd probably type:
e $filepath/z*
Since I know that's the only file with that name under that directory.
However if I've changed $filepath to something else like "/mnt/data/filestore/files/patches/"
then I just get "Shell pattern did not match any files." which is rather unhelpful.

Cheers,
Adam.