Re: dired-do-shell-command: cannot escape the *

[David Kastrup]

dmaster@synopsys.com (David Masterson) writes:

> >>>>> David Kastrup writes:
> > dmaster@synopsys.com (David Masterson) writes:
> >> >>>>> Richard Stallman writes:
> 
> >> >> What's wrong with having dired-do-shell-command ignore the * if
> >> >> it is escaped with a backslash?
> 
> >> > Then people have to wonder about what to do if they want to put
> >> > backslash-* into the shell command.  In other words, this isn't
> >> > as simple in practice as it sounds.
> 
> >> Hmmm.  I suppose you could escape the backslash?  
> 
> > Problem with that is that you would need to double every backslash
> > passed into the shell.  Since the shell itself interprests backslash
> > for escapes (most shells, not all), this would seriously unshellize
> > the syntax of stuff you write as a command.
> 
> Hmmm.  Can anything be done with ^Q (ie. quoted-insert)?

Not really. * already enters itself literally, prefixing with ^Q will
not change that.  The special interpretation comes later.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum
Email: David.Kastrup@t-online.de