#Macaroni (shells)
23-May-89 22:18:10
Sb: #49904-#Macaroni (shells)
Fm: John Draper 76703,4322
To: M2S/Phil Camp 76004,2054
There are no restrictions imposed by shell expansion. If there are
restrictions, they are imposed by the target program. Perhaps it can't handle
that many arguments, or was not designed with the shell in mind. In any case,
handling of wildcard expansion, if left to the shell, _does_ standardize the
resulting programs, makes them smaller, and so on, if the programmers are aware
of the format in which they get arguments.
Expansion in each program is an anachronism, best left to the dinosaurs.
Remember, there are more ways to pass arguments from a shell to a program than
in one string. You could, if it was implemented properly, get all the benefits
of shell expansion while having the results start coming out immediately.
-larry