Re: MCopy Woes MSDOS Copy

[dempson@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

In article <slrn4ug5bj.a1u.scraft@bigpapa.nothinbut.net>,
scraft@bigpapa.nothinbut.net () wrote:

>That is what's weird:  the tool's built-in "help/sample" function
>clearly shows a wildcard but if I type it it doesn't work!
>I enter 
>
>        mcopy .d10 *.dsk /aux/scratch /b
>
>Which says to GNO "run the MCOPY command, use device #10, take
>everything that ends in .dsk, put it on volume AUX, folder
>SCRATCH, and make it binary (no text CR/LF conversion). But it
>doesn't work!  :(

It should work fine in GNO, but it won't work in ORCA/Shell.

The GNO shell works like UNIX: it expands all wildcards before passing the
command to the program.  In this case, if you had three files "first.dsk",
"second.dsk" and "third.dsk", the program would see the command line as:

      mcopy .d10 first.dsk second.dsk third.dsk /aux/scratch /b

ORCA/Shell doesn't expand wildcards automatically.  It leaves the argument
in its original form, and it is the responsibility of the program to
expand the wildcards (where they are appropriate).  The shell provides
calls to do this.

ORCA's standard "match all" wildcard character is '=', not '*'.  ORCA also
supports '?' which causes the shell to prompt you for each matching file. 
(Note that both of these require the application to make the appropriate
shell calls.)

GNO provides the same set of calls, so ORCA-style wildcards will work in
both ORCA and GNO, as long as the program actually supports ORCA-style
wildcards.

-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz
Snail Mail: P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, NEW ZEALAND