pjh@mccc.edu (Peter J. Holsberg) (04/16/91)
What is the etymology of the word "glob"? Thanks, Pete -- Prof. Peter J. Holsberg Mercer County Community College Voice: 609-586-4800 Engineering Technology, Computers and Math UUCP:...!princeton!mccc!pjh 1200 Old Trenton Road, Trenton, NJ 08690 Internet: pjh@mccc.edu Trenton Computer Festival -- 4/20-21/91
jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens) (04/17/91)
In article <1991Apr15.172740.13288@mccc.edu>, pjh@mccc.edu (Peter J. Holsberg) writes: |> What is the etymology of the word "glob"? I'm not sure exactly where the word came from, but here's what the Jargon File(*) has to say about it: glob: /glob/, *not* /glohb/ [UNIX] vt.,n. To expand special characters in a wildcarded name, or the act of so doing (the action is also called `globbing'). The UNIX conventions for filename wildcarding have become sufficiently pervasive that many hackers use some of them in written English, especially in email or news on technical topics. Those commonly encountered include: * wildcard for any string (see also {UN*X}). ? wildcard for any character (generally only read this way at the beginning or in the middle of a word). [] delimits a wildcard matching any of the enclosed characters. {} alternation of comma-separated alternatives. Thus, `foo{baz,qux}' would be read as `foobaz' or `fooqux'. Some examples: "He said his name was [KC]arl" (expresses ambiguity). "That got posted to talk.politics.*" (all the talk.politics subgroups on {USENET}). Other examples are given under the entry for {X}. Compare {regexp}. Historical note: the jargon usage derives from `glob', the name of a subprogram that expanded wildcards in archaic Bourne Shell versions; this was necessary because early UNIX machines had so little memory that the glob routine and the rest of the shell could not be co-resident within 64K of code plus data. (*) Available for anonymous ftp in /pub/jargon/jargon2.8.3.Z on pit-manager.mit.edu (18.72.1.58), or via mail server (send mail with contents "send help" and "send jargon/index" on separate lines to mail-server@pit-manager.mit.edu). -- Jonathan Kamens USnail: MIT Project Athena 11 Ashford Terrace jik@Athena.MIT.EDU Allston, MA 02134 Office: 617-253-8085 Home: 617-782-0710
dmr@alice.att.com (Dennis Ritchie) (04/18/91)
I am the only person who ever knew the true etymology of "glob." Unfortunately, I have forgotten it. I do remember, of course, that the program in early PDP-11 Unix that expanded ?* for the shell was called /etc/glob, but the detail that escapes is why, exactly, that name was picked. Deep hypnotic therapy has revealed that it is cognate with "global," and of this I am confident. The naggingly lost detail is the relationship of the name to the function. I can only guess that I reasoned that the * notation allowed commands to apply globally to a directory. BTW, the Jargon file is wrong in connecting /etc/glob with the Bourne shell. Bourne was the one who integrated file expansion into his shell, and thereby obsoleted /etc/glob. Also it's incorrect to say that globbing couldn't fit into the early shells; in the 5th edition, /bin/sh was 4992 bytes, /etc/glob 1280 bytes of program text. Instead, the separation was an early experiment in modularization and tool-use. Dennis Ritchie dmr@research.att.com
dpaulso@k30b.nswc.navy.mil (ef80) (04/20/91)
In article <20226@alice.att.com> dmr@alice.att.com (Dennis Ritchie) writes: >[...]; in the 5th edition, /bin/sh was 4992 bytes, >/etc/glob 1280 bytes of program text. Amazing. Now, of course, we have -rwxr-xr-x 1 bin bin 45056 May 10 1989 /bin/sh -rwxr-xr-x 2 bin bin 110592 Apr 14 1988 /bin/csh -rwxr-xr-x 2 bin bin 120832 Apr 14 1988 /bin/tcsh This is interesting in light of the discussion in wizards re: "code bloat". /dave -- Dave Paulson dpaulso@relay.nswc.navy.mil (work) Synetics/NAVSWC talos!SandBox!dave@uunet.uu.net (home,NeXTmail)
navarra@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (John 'tms' Navarra) (04/22/91)
In article <1991Apr19.182142.3992@relay.nswc.navy.mil> dpaulso@k30b.nswc.navy.mil (ef80) writes: >In article <20226@alice.att.com> dmr@alice.att.com (Dennis Ritchie) writes: >>[...]; in the 5th edition, /bin/sh was 4992 bytes, >>/etc/glob 1280 bytes of program text. > >Amazing. Now, of course, we have > >-rwxr-xr-x 1 bin bin 45056 May 10 1989 /bin/sh >-rwxr-xr-x 2 bin bin 110592 Apr 14 1988 /bin/csh >-rwxr-xr-x 2 bin bin 120832 Apr 14 1988 /bin/tcsh > FINE FORGET ABOUT BASH!!!! :-) 504 -rwx--x--x 1 root 507904 Apr 3 15:16 bash > >/dave >-- >Dave Paulson dpaulso@relay.nswc.navy.mil (work) >Synetics/NAVSWC talos!SandBox!dave@uunet.uu.net (home,NeXTmail) -- From the Lab of the MaD ScIenTiST: navarra@casbah.acns.nwu.edu