Re: rm nonexisting*; alias with parameters?

[Deliverable Mail <deliverable@gmail.com>]

Thanks, Peter!  (I hear you, Ligesh...  will do later :)  Worked as
described.  Making rm -f does not change zsh behavior, of course, as
globbing happens before -f can kick in -- so it's a bit confusing that
-f doesn't work.  Thankfully zsh says zsh: before its globbing error. 
It's a tricky fault for those who expect rm -f to shut up and do it...

Alexy

On 8/10/05, Peter Stephenson <pws@pwstephenson.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
> Deliverable Mail wrote:
> > I have a log directory where different logs appear, and an alias to
> > clear it up.  I try to define patterns covering all the logs to avoid
> > rm *, which is dangerous and asks for a confirmation.  So I define all
> > possible patterns like in an alias, rml:
> >
> > alias rml='rm prefix1.* *.suffix2*'
> >
> > But when some of the patterns match nothing, zsh prints an error about
> > that doesn't do anything.  How can I change that behavior to the
> > expected of rm -f ?
> 
> (Did you miss the -f after the rm?  That confused me to begin with but
> I'll assume so.  The shell can't make rm look like rm -f.)
> 
> I think what you want is that if some patterns *do* match, the ones that
> don't are silently removed.  The neatest way of doing this is "setopt
> cshnullglob", which uses the csh method:  if no patterns match, the
> shell reports an error, whereas if some do, the others are removed.  If
> you never want the shell error, "setopt nullglob".
> 
> > While I'm on the subject of aliases, looks like zsh aliases are as
> > weak as bash's, so when I have my lr:
> >
> > alias lr='ls -lt | head'
> >
> > which I could not use with a parameter, lr <dir>, I still cannot use a
> > parameter in zsh.  In bash,  made lr a function -- what the zsh
> > function would look like?
> 
> The same, probably.
> 
> lr() {
>  ls -lt "$@" | head
> }
> 
> > And is there a way to do it in an alias, or still not?
> 
> No, functions are the right way.  This is exactly what they're for.
> 
> --
> Peter Stephenson <pws@pwstephenson.fsnet.co.uk>
> Work: pws@csr.com
> Web: http://www.pwstephenson.fsnet.co.uk
>