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Date:      Sun, 9 Mar 2008 15:38:14 +0100 (CET)
From:      Oliver Fromme <olli@lurza.secnetix.de>
To:        freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG, reed@reedmedia.net, josh@tcbug.org, nejc@skoberne.net
Subject:   Re: WooHoo! 10 years of FreeBSD
Message-ID:  <200803091438.m29EcEbr070464@lurza.secnetix.de>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0802291321140.4227@tx.reedmedia.net>

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Jeremy C. Reed wrote:
 > > It's also a shell meta-character in the shells I'm familiar with, and 
 > > gets expanded long before grep would ever see it unless you escape it.  
 > > Hence the question about what shell the poster is using....
 > 
 > sh, bash, or ksh just pass it a long literally if not matched
 > 
 > tcsh, csh complain if not match. The error message says the command name 
 > -- but that is bogus -- as the command is never even ran. Really it is the 
 > shell.

Just for completeness:  zsh is configurable in that regard.
When the option "nomatch" is set (the default), it behaves
like csh, otherwise it behaves like sh.  (There are many
more options that configure the globbing behaviour.)

Personally I prefer the default behaviour, i.e. giving an
error when there is no match.  Using unquoted wildcards
and relying on the fact that there is no match can be very
dangerous.

I also often make use of the feature that zsh expands glob
expressions when you press tab (or it beeps at you if
there is no match).  So you can see exactly what files
are affected by a command _before_ pressing Enter.  That
feature has saved me more than once.

Just my 2 cents.

Best regards
   Oliver

-- 
Oliver Fromme, secnetix GmbH & Co. KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing b. M.
Handelsregister: Registergericht Muenchen, HRA 74606,  Geschäftsfuehrung:
secnetix Verwaltungsgesellsch. mbH, Handelsregister: Registergericht Mün-
chen, HRB 125758,  Geschäftsführer: Maik Bachmann, Olaf Erb, Ralf Gebhart

FreeBSD-Dienstleistungen, -Produkte und mehr:  http://www.secnetix.de/bsd

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