tjr@ihnet.UUCP (Tom Roberts) (04/18/84)
The shell is actually expanding the wild-card (*), NOT cat. Note that if the shell expanded cat <x* it would be possible to have multiple filenames match the "x*", AND THESE EXTRA FILES WOULD BECOME ARGUMENTS TO CAT. This could easily cause very strange behavior (for programs other than cat). The designer(s) of the shell decided to simply NOT expand any wild-cards for stream-redirections. Tom Roberts ihnp4!ihnet!tjr
honey@down.UUCP (code 101) (04/18/84)
i asked bourne some years back why he didn't glob on redirection. he replied that he wasn't satisfied with any of the proposals for handling multiple matches. simply a matter of taste. peter honeyman