Dired and wildcards

Dired and wildcards

[Eli Zaretskii]

Suppose you have a directory named "foo[bar]".  From a Bash prompt,
"ls foo[bar]" will show the contents of that directory, unless there
are files that match the wildcard "foo[bar]".  If there are such
files, `ls' shows me those files, not the directory.  This is
expected, given the way Bash handles wildcards.

But from Emacs on GNU/Linux, "C-x d foo[bar] RET" _always_ shows the
contents of the directory foo[bar].  Is there any way to tell Dired
that the argument is a wildcard, not a literal file name?  What am I
missing?

TIA

Re: Dired and wildcards

[Andreas Schwab]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> But from Emacs on GNU/Linux, "C-x d foo[bar] RET" _always_ shows the
> contents of the directory foo[bar].  Is there any way to tell Dired
> that the argument is a wildcard, not a literal file name?  What am I
> missing?

I'm not sure I understand your question.  In which way is this different
from the situation in the shell?

Andreas.

-- 
Andreas Schwab, SuSE Labs, schwab@suse.de
SuSE Linux Products GmbH, Maxfeldstraße 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany
PGP key fingerprint = 58CA 54C7 6D53 942B 1756  01D3 44D5 214B 8276 4ED5
"And now for something completely different."

Re: Dired and wildcards

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Andreas Schwab <schwab@suse.de>
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 10:40:10 +0200
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> > But from Emacs on GNU/Linux, "C-x d foo[bar] RET" _always_ shows the
> > contents of the directory foo[bar].  Is there any way to tell Dired
> > that the argument is a wildcard, not a literal file name?  What am I
> > missing?
> 
> I'm not sure I understand your question.  In which way is this different
> from the situation in the shell?

At the shell prompt, if there are files that match the shell wildcard
"foo[bar]" (e.g., fooa and foob), `ls' will show them, even though I
have a _subdirectory_ foo[bar] in the sane directory; but in Emacs, I
always get the directory foo[bar], never the files fooa and foob.

Here's a precise recipe:

Outside Emacs: $ mkdir "foo[bar]"; touch "foo[bar]"/{foo,bar}; touch foo{a,b}
Inside Emacs: C-x d foo[bar] RET

Interestingly enough, "C-x d foo*" shows the files fooa and foob.  Why
"foo*" is interpreted by Dired as a wildcard, while "foo[bar]" is not?

Re: Dired and wildcards

[Andreas Schwab]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> Interestingly enough, "C-x d foo*" shows the files fooa and foob.  Why
> "foo*" is interpreted by Dired as a wildcard, while "foo[bar]" is not?

Because "foo*" does not exist.

Andreas.

-- 
Andreas Schwab, SuSE Labs, schwab@suse.de
SuSE Linux Products GmbH, Maxfeldstraße 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany
PGP key fingerprint = 58CA 54C7 6D53 942B 1756  01D3 44D5 214B 8276 4ED5
"And now for something completely different."

Re: Dired and wildcards

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Andreas Schwab <schwab@suse.de>
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 17:30:47 +0200
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> > Interestingly enough, "C-x d foo*" shows the files fooa and foob.  Why
> > "foo*" is interpreted by Dired as a wildcard, while "foo[bar]" is not?
> 
> Because "foo*" does not exist.

And now to my original question: is there a way to tell Dired to
interpret "foo[bar]" as a wildcard, even though a file by that literal
name exists?  You seem to say there is no way, but I'm not sure I
understand you correctly.

Re: Dired and wildcards

[Andreas Schwab]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> And now to my original question: is there a way to tell Dired to
> interpret "foo[bar]" as a wildcard, even though a file by that literal
> name exists?  You seem to say there is no way, but I'm not sure I
> understand you correctly.

An existing directory is always preferred, see dired-noselect:

    ;; If the argument was syntactically  a directory name not a file name,
    ;; or if it happens to name a file that is a directory,
    ;; convert it syntactically to a directory name.
    ;; The reason for checking initially-was-dirname
    ;; and not just file-directory-p
    ;; is that file-directory-p is slow over ftp.
    (if (or initially-was-dirname (file-directory-p dirname))
	(setq dirname  (file-name-as-directory dirname)))

Andreas.

-- 
Andreas Schwab, SuSE Labs, schwab@suse.de
SuSE Linux Products GmbH, Maxfeldstraße 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany
PGP key fingerprint = 58CA 54C7 6D53 942B 1756  01D3 44D5 214B 8276 4ED5
"And now for something completely different."

Re: Dired and wildcards

[Stefan Monnier]

> And now to my original question: is there a way to tell Dired to
> interpret "foo[bar]" as a wildcard, even though a file by that literal
> name exists?  You seem to say there is no way, but I'm not sure I
> understand you correctly.

I'd try "foo[arb]" or "foo[barr]" or "[f]oo[bar]" ... you get the idea.


        Stefan

Re: Dired and wildcards

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Cc: Andreas Schwab <schwab@suse.de>,  emacs-devel@gnu.org
> From: Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
> Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 13:53:11 -0400
> 
> > And now to my original question: is there a way to tell Dired to
> > interpret "foo[bar]" as a wildcard, even though a file by that literal
> > name exists?  You seem to say there is no way, but I'm not sure I
> > understand you correctly.
> 
> I'd try "foo[arb]" or "foo[barr]" or "[f]oo[bar]" ... you get the idea.

Or maybe using -d in the ls switches?

Re: Dired and wildcards

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Andreas Schwab <schwab@suse.de>
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 18:51:51 +0200
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> > And now to my original question: is there a way to tell Dired to
> > interpret "foo[bar]" as a wildcard, even though a file by that literal
> > name exists?  You seem to say there is no way, but I'm not sure I
> > understand you correctly.
> 
> An existing directory is always preferred, see dired-noselect:
> 
>     ;; If the argument was syntactically  a directory name not a file name,
>     ;; or if it happens to name a file that is a directory,
>     ;; convert it syntactically to a directory name.
>     ;; The reason for checking initially-was-dirname
>     ;; and not just file-directory-p
>     ;; is that file-directory-p is slow over ftp.
>     (if (or initially-was-dirname (file-directory-p dirname))
> 	(setq dirname  (file-name-as-directory dirname)))

Okay, thanks.

In case you are wondering, I asked these questions because the ls-lisp
emulation seems not to behave this way.