----- Original Message -----
From: "Eric Blake" <[email protected]>
To: "Laurent TARRISSE" <[email protected]>
Cc: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, September 06, 2011 4:24 PM
Subject: Re: bug#9450: Bug report on 'dirname' : when jokers match several
files
9450 tag wishlist
thanks
On 09/06/2011 07:53 AM, Laurent TARRISSE wrote:
Hi
Here this a strange behaviour using 'dirname' with joker filename:
The term is 'wildcard', not 'joker'
Please accept my apologizes. I'm french :)
dirname: too many arguments
Try `dirname --help' for more information.
Thanks for the report. To some degree, this is expected behavior: POSIX
requires that portable shell scripts pass exactly one argument to dirname,
so passing 0 or more than 1 arguments is necessarily in the realm of
non-portable code, and we would rather error out if we don't have any
better defined semantics for an extension.
OK for the answer.
Could 'dirname' process only its first parameter ?
No. But there _has_ been requests in the past to add an extension to GNU
coreutils to match BSD dirname/basename semantics of optionally taking
more than one parameter:
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-coreutils/2010-05/msg00015.html
But so far, no one has submitted patches. Therefore, I'll keep this bug
report open, but tag it as a wishlist.
Just let me explain... we had to reuse unix scripts, primarily written for
HP UX
>uname -a
HP-UX ppbmo B.11.23 U ia64 3204054692 unlimited-user license
Some of our scripts, who did function perfectly on HP-UX for several years,
encountered problems once moved on Linux platform.
One reason is due to dirname : on HP UX I can give several arguments to
dirname, and as you say, on Linux I cannot. That's all. ;)
--
Eric Blake [email protected] +1-801-349-2682
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org
