Wildcard question

[vefatica]

Below, should doggy.txt have been deleted?

v:\> del doggy.txt.*
Deleting V:\doggy.txt
Deleting V:\doggy.txt.aa
Deleting V:\doggy.txt.ab
    3 files deleted
 
v:\> del doggy.txt.?*
Deleting V:\doggy.txt
Deleting V:\doggy.txt.aa
Deleting V:\doggy.txt.ab
    3 files deleted
 
v:\> del doggy.txt.??
Deleting V:\doggy.txt
Deleting V:\doggy.txt.aa
Deleting V:\doggy.txt.ab
    3 files deleted

 

[Charles Dye]

Below, should doggy.txt have been deleted?

v:\> del doggy.txt.*
Deleting V:\doggy.txt
Deleting V:\doggy.txt.aa
Deleting V:\doggy.txt.ab
    3 files deleted
 
v:\> del doggy.txt.?*
Deleting V:\doggy.txt
Deleting V:\doggy.txt.aa
Deleting V:\doggy.txt.ab
    3 files deleted
 
v:\> del doggy.txt.??
Deleting V:\doggy.txt
Deleting V:\doggy.txt.aa
Deleting V:\doggy.txt.ab
    3 files deleted

Have you tried this?

DEL DOGGY.TXT.[?]*

 

[Charles Dye]

Or, probably more appropriate to what you're trying to do:

del doggy.txt[.]*

The [.] only matches an actual period character. (I presume TCC's somewhat surprising behavior is meant to accommodate the die-hard DOSheads who continue to use *.* to mean "all files"....)

 

[vefatica]

Have you tried this?

DEL DOGGY.TXT.[?]*

Yes, and that works. I had to write a little program to remind myself how the Win32 FindFirstFile/FindNextFile functions worked. Indeed, according to them, "doggy.txt" matches "doggy.txt.??".

 

[rconn]

Below, should doggy.txt have been deleted?

Yes -- try it in CMD, and see the same results.

If you don't want the Windows "match one or more characters unless at the end of the name or extension, in which case also match 0 characters" behavior, use regular expressions instead. They tend to be much more predictable!