>>Actually, if you're listening out there, Eric, this is something I
>>wouldn't mind seeing changed in a future release. To me, it always
>>seemed like the requirement of *@* was confusing, and I've had to coach
>>others through it.
>
>Under MS-DOS, you have to do *.* to affect all files. Under VMS, you have
>to do *.* and possibly *.*;* while under VM it's * * or * * *, and so on.
>The point is that there is a convention, it is arbitrary, it can be
>confusing the first time, and no matter what you choose it will be
>confusing to some and intuitive to others. The only thing to do is to
>learn the convention. If you change it, you'll just be changing the set
>of people to whom it is confusing, and making all the people who were
>used to the old convention very angry, not to mention the possibility of
>screwing up an entire list because you thought * = all users on my
>system.
Hmmmm...good point. Guess I've been using Unix too long....
Would it be practical to add some sort of user-specific preferences for
these kinds of things? So that I could tell listserv that, when I said *
was everybody, but Jenny Admin across the hall still uses her old *@*?
Likewise, for specifying modifiers, so that Jenny could still use (netwide,
while I could use -netwide. And so on.
I'm not sure that I'd make this an especially high priority, but it could
make a nice addition to the interface, especially if it came with sets to
mimic other operating systems
> Eric
b&
----
Ben Goren
Arizona State University School of Music
Internet: [log in to unmask]
BITNet: BenGoren AT ASU
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