jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens) (04/17/91)
Archive-name: hackers/words/jargon-file/1991-04-17 Archive-directory: mc.lcs.mit.edu:/pub/jargon/ [18.26.0.179] Original-posting-by: jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens) Original-subject: Re: "Glob" Reposted-by: emv@msen.com (Edward Vielmetti, MSEN) 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 -- comp.archives file verification mc.lcs.mit.edu total 416 -rw-r--r-- 1 ftp wheel 10427 Mar 23 17:40 DIFF281-282 -rw-r--r-- 1 ftp wheel 4447 Mar 2 11:41 READ.ME.271 -rw-r--r-- 1 ftp wheel 399569 Mar 24 12:17 jargon2.8.2.Z found jargon-file ok mc.lcs.mit.edu:/pub/jargon/