On Sat, May 28, 2011 at 9:01 PM, Patrick O'Callaghan <pocallaghan@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> I was under the impression the shell accepts simple globs like '?' for >> any single character and '*' for any one or more characters hence I >> assumed it is an ls feature. I just read the "pattern matching" >> section in 'man bash' and realised I was misinformed. :) > > The use of regular expressions for filename matching dates back to the > beginnings of Unix. In fact on 16-bit machines it was actually done in a > separate program called /etc/glob, called by the Shell when needed, > since otherwise the Shell process would have been too big for the > address space (64Kb :-). Those days have long gone of course. > > BTW this is where we get the verb "globbing" meaning "filename > expansion". > Always a pleasure every time you pitch in with these wonderful historical anecdotes. :) > poc -- Suvayu Open source is the future. It sets us free. -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
