copying files

[Maarten Litmaath]

In article <28626 at mimsy.umd.edu>,
	chris at mimsy.umd.edu (Chris Torek) writes:
)...
)>ls -d .[^.]*
)
)This does not work, for several reasons:
)
)	- the syntax given (left-bracket caret period right-bracket)
)	  only works in POSIXish shells.

POSIX 1003.2 Draft 10 does not agree with you, Chris...

)	  Among those excluded are all
)	  of the 4BSD and System V shells except *very* recent work.
)	  Some System V shells have an alternative syntax ([!.]).

...just like the POSIX shell.  POSIX `blessed' the existing practice (*),
that is `!', instead of `^', which would have been more consistent with
the regular expression syntaxes.  But who gives a damn about consistency?

(*) The System V people chose `!' because `^' was an ancient synonym for
the pipe symbol:

	date ^ cat

The shell syntax of POSIX 1003.2 Draft 10 does not mention `^' as an
alternative for `|' (anymore).  Good!
--
In the Bourne shell syntax tabs and spaces are equivalent almost everywhere.
The exception: _indented_ here documents.  :-(
Does anyone remember the famous mistake Makefile-novices often make?