Re: glob executable vs. non executable

[Ray Andrews <rayandrews@eastlink.ca>]

On 2022-10-27 16:19, Lawrence Velázquez wrote:
> See zshexpn(1), in the paragraph immediately following the list of
> glob qualifiers.  It is admittedly easy to overlook.
I've always 'bounced off' the manual, I just don't have the language, 
it's written by adepts for adepts, but perhaps the time has come that 
I'm ready to try to read the thing again.
>
> By this definition, every possible command name is "actionable".
> After all, *something* always happens.
Sometimes what happens is a 'no such command' message.  But yeah, if it 
is a command and and zsh finds it, then I want to know where it comes 
from.  A builtin and a binary file are very different things.
>
> A symlink is not inherently more "actionable" than a regular file
> that does not have executable permissions.  The target is what's
> important, not the symlink.
Sure, but the symlink is the first thing acted on.   Of course one 
follows the link to wherever it leads.  I remember when Peter gave me 
'whence -S' so it was explicit.
> As I said in my last message, the "-" glob qualifier allows you to
> include or exclude symlinks based on their targets' attributes.
> There is no reason to blindly lump all symlinks together, when you
> can easily pick out the ones that actually matter.

Call it lack of confidence, but I like to see them, and then see where 
they go.  It gets better with time but when I first started with Linux 
there were times when I had no idea what was being acted on when I typed 
a command.  I'd be looking for a file when it was an alias or a 
builtin.  For a long time when I typed 'zsh' I was actually firing up 
the wrong version.