Re: man page prompter thinks "|" is legitimate

["David R. Linn" <drl@vuse.vanderbilt.edu>]

>> Gentlemen, type s o r t | u n i q <escape> x m a n <return>
>> We are then prompted with
>>         Manual entry (default sort|uniq):
>> Why, that's ridiculous.  How could a potential man page have a | in
>> its name?  Can't the prompter be more intelligent in guessing what man
>> page we want?


$$ mkdir demo.for.dan
$$ cd demo.for.dan
$$ touch filename\|including\|vbars
$$ ls
filename|including|vbars
$$ touch sort\|uniq.1
$$ ls
filename|including|vbars  sort|uniq.1


vertical-bar *is* a legitmate filename character under UNIX.  Thus,
if I felt it was appropriate, I could name a man page with a vbar
in it's filename.  This might not be particularly *wise* but it *would*
be legit so tools need to handle it.