Re: ! in Dired--what was the outcome?

[Luc Teirlinck]

Juri Linkov wrote:

   Here is a short example what this would look like:

         \*f - all marked file names
         \?f - each marked file name
         \*d - all marked file names with directory
         \?d - each marked file name with directory
         \*x - all marked file names without extensions
         \?x - each marked file name without extension
         \*(s-expr) - s-expression evaluated on all files
         \?(s-expr) - s-expression evaluated on each file,
                      where rules for finding the end of s-expression are
                      the same as those used for \,(...) in query-replace

I guess you also would need a rule that if Emacs sees \\* or \\? it
actually passes \* or \? to the shell to allow _literal_ *'s and ?'s
in file names.  Then all of that would have to be documented in the
Emacs manual.

Maybe I should mention a possible simpler solution, proposed in
private email by Johan Vromans to use {} instead of ?, in analogy with
the -exec argument of find(1).

mv {} .{}.uu

I do not know whether we then also should use () or [] or such
instead of * for consistency.  The idea is to get rid of confusion
with shell wildcards.

I guess it actually even is possible to use "" and '' instead of ? and
*.  Why do we absolutely want to use shell wildcards for this?


Sincerely,

Luc.