Re: dired-do-shell-command: allow changing time bomb * to @

[Kim F. Storm]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:

> That message suggests an idea to me.  We could solve several problems
> by changing the character that dired-do-shell-command uses to mean
> "all files at once" from * to something else like @.
> 
> This way, people could use *.  And we could say that @ only has
> that meaning when it is surrounded by whitespace.  That way, if you
> want to quote @, you just have to write "@" which would quote
> it for the shell anyway.
> 
> What do people think of this?  It is an incompatible change,
> but the benefit may be worth the incompatibility.
> 

IMO, it sounds like a reasonable change, but could be
dangerous!  If someone is used to deleting selected files with
dired-do-shell-command "rm *", then they are in for a surprise if
the * suddenly starts to work as a normal shell wildcard...

++kfs