At 12:54 PM 5/6/98 -0700, Jeff Vance wrote:
>On May 6, 10:45pm, Costas Anastassiades wrote:
>> Wildcards in FILE equates would be nice ... but equally so would be Group
>> and Account equates ... :))
>
>I am curious to know why symbolic links cannot serve a similar purpose.
>E.g.
>  newlink /ACCT1, /ACCT2
>or
>  newlink /ACCT/GRP1, /ACCT/GRP2

Because there are many times when either (the redirection should be session
(or job) specific) or (the file or group or account exists and we want to
substitute another in its place for the moment) or (both).  File equates do
this great for one file at a time.  It sure would be nice if I could say:

        :file @[log in to unmask]

or

        :file @[log in to unmask]

or even

        :file @[log in to unmask]
        :make myprog

P.S. If we do manage to get this one off the ground maybe can we sneak in
an extra keyword or something that will make a wildcarded file equate
optionally act something like

        :file @[log in to unmask];ifexists
or
        :file @[log in to unmask];ifexists
or (more likely)
        :file @[log in to unmask];ifexists

where the ";ifexists" flag says that the redirection is an attempt and that
if the file is missing in the target, the original file is used anyway.
This would allow copying only the files that are actually different to the
"test" or "revised c" location.

The alternative is a script/program which does something like (and I know
I'm mixing metaphors):

        foreach file in @.myc
        do
        file basename(file).c=!file
        done
--
Jeff Woods
[log in to unmask] at Tivoli Systems
[log in to unmask]   at home  [PGP key available here via finger]