flowers@ucla-cs.UUCP (04/29/87)
Why does the fact that DOS treats *FOO.* (as in "DIR *FOO.*") the same as "*.*" remain unfixed? Does anyone know of a patch to fix this?
heather@blia.BLI.COM (Heather Mackinnon) (04/29/87)
In article <5734@shemp.UCLA.EDU>, flowers@CS.UCLA.EDU writes: > > Why does the fact that DOS treats *FOO.* (as in "DIR *FOO.*") the same > as "*.*" remain unfixed? DOS treats * as ???????? in the filename and as ??? in the extension. This means that *FOO.* becomes ????????FOO.???. Since DOS only considers the first eight characters of a filename significant, it tosses FOO away and matches *FOO.* to everything. > Does anyone know of a patch to fix this? If you want true regular expression processing, you'll need a more UNIX -like command processor. MS doesn't consider this a bug; it's stated quite clearly in the DOS documentation. Heather Mackinnon
darrylo@hpsrlc.UUCP (04/30/87)
In / comp.sys.ibm.pc / flowers@CS.UCLA.EDU / 9:22 pm Apr 28, 1987 / > Why does the fact that DOS treats *FOO.* (as in "DIR *FOO.*") the same > as "*.*" remain unfixed? > > Does anyone know of a patch to fix this? > ---------- Unfortunately, Messy-Dos does not support regular expression pattern matching. To fix this, you'd probably have to write your own command.com-like shell (you could, I suppose, hack and slash command.com to support *FOO.*, but the work involved in disassembling command.com and finding a safe place to put the patch would probably be as much work as writing your own shell). Sorry for the bad news. -- Darryl Okahata ucbvax!ucbcad!ames!hplabs!hpcea!hpsrla!darrylo <== best path hplabs!hpcea!hpsrla!darrylo <== alternative CompuServe: 75206,3074 Disclaimer: the above is the author's personal opinion and is not the opinion or policy of his employer or of the little green men that have been following him all day.
tj@mks.UUCP (05/02/87)
In article <5734@shemp.UCLA.EDU>, flowers@CS.UCLA.EDU writes: > > Why does the fact that DOS treats *FOO.* (as in "DIR *FOO.*") the same > as "*.*" remain unfixed? > > Does anyone know of a patch to fix this? DOS inherited from CP/M a very simplitic interpretation of "*": it is replaced by as many "?"s as will fit. "?" is defined to match " " as well as any other character (remember that FOO.BAR is actually stored in the directory entry as "FOO BAR"). This whole kludge would be a nightmare to patch into something reasonable. You can however simply junk command.com, and replace it with a real shell. The Korn shell in the MKS Toolkit springs readily to mind. Full UNIX-style globbing (wild-card expansion to those of you who were not around before version 7): not only *foo.* but also *foo*, */*foo, */*/*.bar work correctly. In fact all the Toolkit commands do proper globbing even when invoked from command.com, but with the shell you can have the work done for you even in the case of non-Toolkit commands. Yes, i am closely involved with MKS. -- ll // // ,~/~~\' T. J. Thompson {decvax,ihnp4,seismo}!watmath!mks!tj /ll/// //l' `\\\ Mortice Kern Systems Inc. / l //_// ll\___/ 43 Bridgeport Rd. E., Waterloo, ON, Can. N2J 2J4 O_/ (519)884-2251