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Re: AI 2000-05-010: proposed interface

To: yyyyyyyy@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: AI 2000-05-010: proposed interface
From: yyyy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Kai Henningsen)
Date: 22 Aug 2000 16:37:00 +0200
Cc: yyyyyyyyyyyy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Organization: Organisation? Me?! Are you kidding?
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yyyyyyyy@xxxxxxxxxxx (Sandra O'donnell USG)  wrote on 16.08.00 in 
<yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

>    > In my mind [a-c] should include a A b B c C (and diacritcs).
>    > New and novice users would expect that behaviour.
>
>    On which planet do you live?  People writing
>
>          rm [a-z]*
>
>    don't want to see their file named IMPORTANT being removed.
>
> I live on Planet Earth. A place where people speak different languages
> and have different expectations about what any given range includes.
> Not everyone is a Unix veteran who only uses the C locale.
>
> You have often said that you only have U.S. locales on the systems
> available to you. Your systems may only exhibit 1970s and 1980s
> behavior with respect to character handling, but most of us have
> moved way beyond that.

Yes, most of us non-US types have been badly burned by [a-c] including  
upper case letters.

That doesn't mean it's right.

Actually, what is really needed, IMNSHO, is the ability to select for  
either C or national locale behaviour on a case-by-case basis.

When I want to read the important files, I'll do "vi [A-Z]*" and certainly  
don't want to see anything starting with lower case; OTOH, when I'm  
looking for some term, I certainly hope grep allows me to ignore the case.

Both versions are actually necessary. And only selecting between them via  
setting and unsetting LANG is a really bad interface.

MfG Kai

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