On Sun, Jan 4, 2015, at 21:07, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
Do all Windows apps call FindFirstFile?
Most Windows apps' only interaction with wildcards is via the system file selection dialog. Ultimately, FindFirstFile/FindNextFile is the only way to enumerate files in a directory - it's the equivalent of opendir/readdir. You're expected to pass in directory\* or *.* if you want to enumerate all files in a directory with no filtering. I think it's rare for programs not deliberately written to emulate some other behavior or ported from unix (with canned implementations of opendir, readdir, glob, and fnmatch being easier than rewriting everything to use the windows functions) to implement their own wildcard handling rather than using the Windows API - the C Runtime functions findfirst/findnext date back to early DOS C compilers (the OS functions were int 21,4E and 4F.)
I know that. The point that Random raised is that some wildcards are legal in Windows file names.
Well, more specifically, that the square bracket is both allowed in Windows filenames and not expected to be used as a wildcard, so there is no escape mechanism (since the only standard wildcards are ? and *, which are not allowed in filenames)
Yes, and *all* wildcards are legal in POSIX filenames, so whatever problems we have with escaping are going to occur on both platforms, as you have already pointed out above.
Well, yes, except for the fact that escaping and quoting is handled by the shell on POSIX. My _main_ reason for mentioning it was to forestall objections involving applying wildcards to double-quoted strings, since double quote does _not_ normally escape wildcards on Windows.