[Info-vax] Unix and DCL shells

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

On Fri, 12 Jan 2024 13:21:42 -0000 (UTC), Simon Clubley wrote:

> The main thing missing on VMS is that you can't use a grouping
> operator such as [a-d] to restrict the files selected or to select
> everyting not in the grouping operator.

Ah, true. I suppose that could be added as a new kind of wildcard option 
to the existing wildcard syntax. After all, there is no shortage of 
characters that are currently illegal in filespecs, that could be used. ;)

For those who are wondering about the usefulness of this on *nix systems, 
here

    ls -ld ~/.[!.]*

is a command to list all dotfiles/dotdirectories in my home directory.

(As to why they need to clutter up the top level of my home directory, is 
another peeve.)

(As to why every directory needs to contain those useless “.” and “..” 
entries, is yet another peeve.)

> There's nothing similar to the {} expansion operator either.

That's not in POSIX, that’s a bash-ism. And it’s not really a “wildcard”, 
either.