[Python-Dev] automatic wildcard expansion on Win32

David Ascher da@ski.org
Fri, 18 Jun 1999 10:09:27 -0700 (Pacific Daylight Time)


A python-help poster finally convinced me that there was a way to enable
automatic wildcard expansion on win32.  This is done by linking in
"setargv.obj" along with all of the other MS libs.  Quick testing shows
that it works.

Is this a feature we want to add?  I can see both sides of that coin.

--david

PS: I saw a RISKS digest posting last week which had a horror story about
wildcard expansion on some flavor of Windows.  The person had two files
with long filenames:

    verylongfile1.txt
 and
    verylongfile2.txt

But Win32 stored them in 8.3 format, so they were stored as
    verylo~2.txt
 and 
    verylo~1.txt

(Yes, the 1 and 2 were swapped!).  So when he did

 del *1.txt

he removed the wrong file.  Neat, eh?

(This is actually relevant -- it's possible that setargv.obj and glob.glob
could give different answers).

--david