Re: 'whence' question

[Ray Andrews <rayandrews@eastlink.ca>]

On 11/11/2014 11:14 AM, Bart Schaefer wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 11, 2014 at 8:52 AM, Ray Andrews <rayandrews@eastlink.ca> wrote:
>> Got that patch.  It works as advertised
> If you haven't already, you might want to get minimally familiar with
> "git" so you can pull from the development repository rather than
> applying individual patches.
Right, I just wanted to have a chew on that patch first.  Tricky doing 
it by hand,
gotta learn to do it correctly.
> and see what you get.  I think this will explain all your confusion.
Well, lots of it anyway ;-) in the case of:

     $ whence zsh*
     zsh
     /usr/local/bin/zsh-RayStyle1

... it was just a coincidence that a copy of the latter file was in my 
current dir, thus
a subject for search.  It wasn't 'really' scanning the path for "zsh*" 
in the same
way that it would with '-m' active. I got the results I expected, but 
for absolutely
the wrong reasons.)
>
> For "whence" one probably would always quote patterns.  For most other
> commands that operate on file names, one probably wants them unquoted,
> so that is the default behavior.  Command line input semantics
> including globbing are entirely separate in *nix from the semantics
> internal to the command itself -- very unlike DOS where it is up to
> the command to invoke globbing on its arguments.
Ok, I think I get it.  That's the difference between quoted and unquoted 
arguments to
whence or anything else.  One might validly leave ' zsh* ' unquoted, but 
the meaning
is very different.  I should already have that written in my DNA, pardon 
for being
thick headed.