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From: crs@lanl.gov (Charlie Sorsby)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: cat foo* > foo.bar causes infinite loop
Date: 13 Nov 1996 20:03:36 GMT
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Lines: 29
Message-ID: <56d9io$ijc@newshost.lanl.gov>
References: <328A1236.32C4@pilot.msu.edu>
Reply-To: crs@hamlet.lanl.gov
NNTP-Posting-Host: hamlet.lanl.gov
In article <328A1236.32C4@pilot.msu.edu>,
Ed Symanzik <zik@pilot.msu.edu> wrote:
= If I create three files foo1, foo2, and foo3 then run the command
=
= cat foo* > foo.bar
=
= in csh I get an infinite loop (at least until the partition fills up).
= Seems to me that '*' should be evaluated before new files are created.
= I have seen systems that don't behave this way give errors similar to
= "can't open foo.bar for both input and output".
I haven't run into that one yet but I have noticed anomalies in
wild-card expansion. Unfortunately, I can't think of a concrete
example at the moment--simply situations where "% something *" or
"% something somethingelse*" or the like behaved in a way that
seemed odd compared with what I'm accustomed to. Mainly, I think,
it would do something before evaluating the "*" expression.
FreeBSD (presently 2.1.5R) is my first experience wiht BSD 4.4. My
experience is with BSD 4.[123], Ultrix, SunOS, and the like.
I'll be interested to hear comments about this.
--
Best,
Charlie "Older than dirt" Sorsby "I'm the NRA!"
crs@swcp.com crs@hamlet.lanl.gov Life Member since 1965