On 2017-07-09 23:44, ron minnich <rminnich(a)gmail.com> wrote: Well, that would not rename files, but copy them and at the same time changing their names. But you could also do renaming in a similar way, but usually it would require a switch to PIP telling it that you wanted the files renamed, and not copied. Also, the syntax of PIP, and the order of arguments is a bit different. At least the versions I can remember right now, it would be: PIP *.OLD=*.TXT to copy, and PIP *.OLD/RE=*.TXT to rename. And yes, it is the program who process the wildcard expansions, and not the command interpreter. Which is why commands like the ones above worked. This is one of those classical examples you get to when comparing Unix with DEC OSes about wildcarding, and the effects the different ways they are done have on the result. (In Unix, you can't do such a mass copy and rename in the same way.) Yes. It's the same on the OSes I've used on PDP-8s as well. I would say that the globbing in Unix have much less to do with regular expressions and much more to do with trying to mimic what DEC was doing in their OSes. In a way, it would have made more sense to just use standard RE's for globbing, but that didn't happen. And like I said, I suspect it was because DEC OSes did it this way, and Unix just mimicked it. Same I guess with the convention of '.' to separate filename from type. Even though it's less pervasive in Unix than in DEC systems. Johnny -- Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: bqt(a)softjar.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol