Problem with wildcard from Windows

Bengt Larsson lists.cygwin@bengtl.net
Wed Dec 30 18:29:00 GMT 2009


 Warren Young wrote:
>On 12/30/2009 10:18 AM, Bengt Larsson wrote:
>>> Try "noglob" if your shell is not Cygwin-aware.
>>
>> Eh? The problem is that it doesn't glob when it should. The shell is
>> standard CMD.EXE, ie Windows console.
>
>The behavior you're relying on is a nonstandard Cygwin extension which 
>most Cygwin users, I dare say, don't even use themselves.  It's an 
>emulation of a feature all POSIX shells have, internal globbing. 
>cmd.exe doesn't provide globbing services to programs it runs, so Cygwin 
>by default ("CYGWIN=glob") tries to do this for you, but it appears 
>there are weaknesses.
>
>Another thing that doesn't work:
>
>	c:\> echo W*
>
>This should give "Windows" at least.
>
>What I'm having trouble understanding is why you've installed Cygwin but 
>then insist on sticking with the primitive cmd.exe shell.  Your globbing 
>problem will go away if you switch to one of the many shells in the 
>Cygwin package repository.

Every port of Unix utilities to Windows such as ls, grep and so forth do
this globbing internally. It's not only Cygwin that does it. The reason
is, it can be useful to use Unix command line utilities from the Windows
command line. ls, for example, has a handy way of seeing the whole
precision of a file timestamp. grep is a better grepper.

--
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple



More information about the Cygwin mailing list