GNU bug report logs - #28969
27.0.50; dired: Confirmation prompt for wildcard not surrounded by whitespace

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From: Kévin Le Gouguec <kevin.legouguec <at> gmail.com>
To: Michael Heerdegen <michael_heerdegen <at> web.de>
Cc: Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi <at> gnus.org>, 28969 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, Noam Postavsky <npostavs <at> gmail.com>, Drew Adams <drew.adams <at> oracle.com>
Subject: bug#28969: 27.0.50; dired: Confirmation prompt for wildcard not surrounded by whitespace
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2019 07:53:09 +0200

Michael Heerdegen <michael_heerdegen <at> web.de> writes:

> BTW, in the docstring of `dired-do-shell-command',
>
> (1) In this sentence:
>
> | `*' and `?' when not surrounded by whitespace nor ``' have no special
>
> can we avoid that ` gets linked to the backquote macro?

No idea how to fix that off the top of my head.

> (2) "If you want to use `*' as a shell wildcard with whitespace around
> it, write `*\"\"' in place of just `*'."
>
> does that really mean *"" or rather "*"?

I think it really means *"".  From some quick testing in a Dired buffer:

    M-! touch foo bar baz RET
    g                           ; Assuming point is now on "bar"
    ! echo quux "*" corge RET y ; ⇒ quux * corge bar
    ! echo quux *"" corge RET y ; ⇒ quux bar baz foo corge bar

*'' also works.  AFAICT it's a way to work around Dired's isolation
detection (* is not surrounded with spaces, so it's not isolated) while
exploiting the fact that the quoted empty string will disappear once
"expanded" by the shell.

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