Query about "all" wildcard in Shell

[Foebane]

This is more of a curiosity, so bear with me:

I've just successfully used the command

copy all from rdh0: to sys:games/s

for a game to copy it from a removable drive to a specified path. The "all" keyword is useful as it allows for the copying of everything in that path, both files and folders... but then I got to thinking, what if there is a file there called "all" in the source path? Will it copy everything, or just that file?

Just curious as to how Shell would manage that.

[daxb]

Here it works. You can try it on your system. However, FROM and TO aren't needed and ALL can be placed at the end. E.g.: "copy rdh0: sys:games/s ALL CLONE". Don't to forget to use CLONE.

[thomas]

Originally Posted by Foebane

but then I got to thinking, what if there is a file there called "all" in the source path?

The arguments are examined first. If ALL is found in the command line, it is used as switch, not as file name. If you want to copy a file called "all", you have to put it in quotes or put the keyword from in front of it.

copy "all" dh0: all
copy from all to dh0: all
copy from="all" dh0: all
copy all from all to dh0:

this might work, but i'm not sure: copy all all dh0:

This one, if it passes the argument examination, will not do what you might think it does: copy all dh0: all
It will copy all files and drawers from dh0 to a new directory called "all".

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by daxb

Here it works. You can try it on your system. However, FROM and TO aren't needed and ALL can be placed at the end. E.g.: "copy rdh0: sys:games/s ALL CLONE". Don't to forget to use CLONE.

It worked great! Thanks!

Originally Posted by thomas

The arguments are examined first. If ALL is found in the command line, it is used as switch, not as file name. If you want to copy a file called "all", you have to put it in quotes or put the keyword from in front of it.

copy "all" dh0: all
copy from all to dh0: all
copy from="all" dh0: all
copy all from all to dh0:

this might work, but i'm not sure: copy all all dh0:

This one, if it passes the argument examination, will not do what you might think it does: copy all dh0: all
It will copy all files and drawers from dh0 to a new directory called "all".

Sounds complicated. To think that the designers of AmigaOS, WB and Intuition had so little time to develop a full-blown OS without the resources of Microsoft or anything like that, it's amazing.

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by Foebane

Sounds complicated. To think that the designers of AmigaOS, WB and Intuition had so little time to develop a full-blown OS without the resources of Microsoft or anything like that, it's amazing.

I'm sorry to disappoint you, but this stuff was not designed by CBM engineers at all. It was bought, as complete product, from MetaComCo, UK, who bought TRIPOS from the University of Cambridge. All of this stuff - the dos.library, the shell and its commands - are older than AmigaOs.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

I'm sorry to disappoint you, but this stuff was not designed by CBM engineers at all. It was bought, as complete product, from MetaComCo, UK, who bought TRIPOS from the University of Cambridge. All of this stuff - the dos.library, the shell and its commands - are older than AmigaOs.

I've heard of MetaComCo before, but I didn't know it was British! WOW! Talk about NON-disappointment!

[thomas]

Originally Posted by Foebane

Sounds complicated.

Actually it is not complicated at all. If you enter copy ? it will display the command line template. This template is used to read the command line arguments. This is done by the ReadArgs function independently of the purpose of the command. This means at this stage it does not yet look into the file system and this it does not matter whether a file named ALL is there or not.

The template contains four parameters: FROM, TO, ALL and CLONE. The ReadArgs function parses the command line and fills in these four parameters. If the word ALL is found, the ALL switch will be set on. If the word CLONE is found, the CLONE switch will be set on. If the word FROM is found, the string behind it will be put into the FROM parameter. If the word TO is found, the string behind it will be put into the TO parameter. If neither FROM or TO are found but there are unnamed arguments, the first one will be put into FROM and the last one into TO.

When the ReadArgs function returns, the Copy command will continue with the parameter list returned. It does not look into the command line any more. It uses the switches and strings returned by the ReadArgs function in the parameter list.

So in order to copy the ALL file, you have to think how to tell ReadArgs that the string ALL should go into the FROM place of the parameter list.

copy from all dh0:

should do it. The "all" string will go into the FROM place because it is preceded by the "from" keyword. "dh0:" will go into the TO place because it is unnamed and FROM is already set.