Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1992 16:49 CST
From: DARREL HANKERSON <HANK AT DUCVAX DOT AUBURN DOT EDU>
Subject: Last word (for now) on globbing
To: 99clifto AT lab DOT cc DOT wmich DOT edu
Cc: ericb AT lsid DOT hp DOT com, djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
Status: O

Eric Backus <ericb AT lsid DOT hp DOT com>  points out that any djgpp-compiled program
will handle "response files" (those beginning with "@"). I hadn't even
considered checking for this (I feel a bit foolish). 
 
This may solve the globbing issue for some programs (certainly for
texindex--just use your favorite globber, output to a file, then invoke
texindex). This approach does not have the length-limit problem of some of the
other suggested solutions. There is a dos-globber in the perl release, and the
GNUish glob.c can also be compiled as a nice globber. (ms_sh is another
possibility).

Thanks to Eric Backus, d.clifton [99clifto AT lab DOT cc DOT wmich DOT edu], and all the
others. I've enclosed part of E.B.' note, since the ideas may be of interest to
others:

-- From E. Backus ---------------------------------------------------
Yes, I really do mean go32.  It's not exactly documented, so it
surprised me as well.  Anything you run with go32 will automatically
and transparently expand 'response files' on the command line.  I've
tested and used this feature.

To insert globbing at link time means a different crt0.o file.  This
doesn't sound too hard to me - I might just try to implement this.
But if it's implemented in go32 instead of crt0.o, you can have two
different go32 programs and decide at RUNTIME whether you want
globbing or not.  To me this sounds even better than doing it at link
time.
-- End of message ----------------------------------------------------


Remark: MSC does it at link time. Eric's idea about two different go32 programs
has the advantage of not including the globbing code in every exe which may
need it. d.clifton also points out this problem, but his recommendation, as I
understand it, would require changes to the program you wish to compile. I'd
like a simple method which requires no changes to source code. The glob.c that
I added to texindex required only changing the name of main().
 
--darrel hankerson hank AT ducvax DOT auburn DOT edu