CompuServe Messages

Don, The discussion is about shell expansion vs non-shell expansion, not rm. Rm has nothing to do with it. Another example is mv, why can't you do "mv *.c *.x" on a unix system? Because the shell expands the wildcards for you. Would it be desirable for this to occur? Sure. The point I am trying to make is that just because you and I grew up with unix shell expansion does not mean it is the only way to go, there are definite limitations on that as well. With a centralized wildcard parser, called by each program, you have just as consistant an interface. sdb p.s The reason you have to compare the names in the directory with the names on the command line (instead of just using argc) is because you can type a command line like this: rm foo ../bar if there were two files in the current directory, then argc-1 == 2 and dircount == 2.