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- Here's an idea for bringing wildcard support to programs that don't normally
- accept wildcards. I found this posted in an old message on a pay service.
- I think the message was dated 1987. The writer (the sysop of the group) said
- he got it "several years ago" from Ward Christensen.
-
- At any rate, the idea is simple yet elegant. You simply put "expand" in front
- of the command line, and use wildcards instead of filenames as program
- parameters.
-
- Example 1:
-
- expand type *.doc
-
- Entering "type *.doc" will cause DOS to return "file not found." Using
- expand.bat will get around this, and type every .doc file in your subdirectory.
-
- Example 2:
-
- expand edit *.txt
-
- Say you have a number of text files that need updating. Just move them to a
- working directory, and issue the above command (replacing "edit" with the
- name of your text editor). The files will be presented one by one for editing.
-
- I'm sure you get the idea, and can come up with your own uses for expand!
-
- -- Duane Paulson