[BUG][REPORT] Possible error in on man 7 glob

[BUG][REPORT] Possible error in on man 7 glob

[Arnaud Gaillard]

Hello,

the `man 7 glob` states that:

>A range cannot contain an explicit '/' character;
> this would lead to a syntax error.

What I understand from this is that :

> sh$ echo [/-a]
> sh$ echo [a-/]

should be producing syntax errors. However, this is not the case,
as these just print out literally.

> sh$ uname -a
Linux caml 3.19.0-25-generic #26~14.04.1-Ubuntu SMP \
Fri Jul 24 21:16:20 UTC \
2015 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux \

This was tested on:

* bash: GNU bash, version 4.3.11(1)-release (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)
* tcsh: tcsh 6.19.00 (Astron)
* ksh: sh (AT&T Research) 93u

Sincerely yours,

-- 
Arnaud GAILLARD
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Re: [BUG][REPORT] Possible error in on man 7 glob

[Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)]

Hello Arnaud,

On 9 August 2016 at 11:29, Arnaud Gaillard <arnaud.mgaillard-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> the `man 7 glob` states that:
>
>>A range cannot contain an explicit '/' character;
>> this would lead to a syntax error.
>
> What I understand from this is that :
>
>> sh$ echo [/-a]
>> sh$ echo [a-/]
>
> should be producing syntax errors. However, this is not the case,
> as these just print out literally.
>
>> sh$ uname -a
> Linux caml 3.19.0-25-generic #26~14.04.1-Ubuntu SMP \
> Fri Jul 24 21:16:20 UTC \
> 2015 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux \
>
> This was tested on:
>
> * bash: GNU bash, version 4.3.11(1)-release (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)
> * tcsh: tcsh 6.19.00 (Astron)
> * ksh: sh (AT&T Research) 93u

Further down the page, there is a statement: "However, POSIX requires
that a wildcard pattern is left unchanged when it is syntactically
incorrect". So, the point is that a syntactically incorrect pattern
doesn't cause an error, it simply doesn't glob. But I agree that the
text you cite is a little confusing. So I changed the text there to:

       A range containing an explicit  '/'  character  is
       syntactically  incorrect.  (POSIX requires that syntactically incorrect
       patterns are left unchanged.)

Hopefully, that lessens the scope for misreading.

Cheers,

Michael

-- 
Michael Kerrisk
Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/
Linux/UNIX System Programming Training: http://man7.org/training/
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