RE: ATTRIB (Using chmod instead)

Incidentally, the touch command has a "-c" switch that will prevent it
from creating files when they don't exist.  So you could solve your
*.jsp problem by simply typing:

     touch -c *.jsp



On Wed, 19 Dec 2001, Scott Klement wrote:
>
> On Wed, 19 Dec 2001, Joe Pluta wrote:
> > >
> > > That's what 'touch' is supposed to do, Joe.  People frequently use it to
> > > create empty files in UNIX environments.
> >
> > With invalid names?  I didn't think you could create a file called "*.jsp"
> > in Unix.
> >
>
> Depends on which shell you're using under Unix.  I usually use tcsh,
> and it tells me:
>
>      % touch *.jsp
>      touch: No match.
>
> However, if I do:
>      % touch '*.jsp'
>      % ls -l \**
>      -rw-r--r--  1 klemscot  wheel  0 Dec 19 16:22 *.jsp
>
>
> QSHELL, however, doesn't try to emulate tcsh.  It tries to emulate the
> Bourne Shell, "/bin/sh", so a better test is to try it there:
>
>      % /bin/sh
>      $ rm \*.jsp
>      $ ls -l \**
>      ls: **: No such file or directory
>      $ touch *.jsp
>      $ ls -l \**
>      -rw-r--r--  1 scotty  wheel  0 Dec 19 16:26 *.jsp
>
> As you can see...  it does exactly what QSHELL does.
>
> As far as "not being able" to create a file with a '*' in it, AFIAK, the
> only character you CAN'T have in a filename in Unix is '/'.  In
> addition to that, you can't have a file called "." or ".." (though,
> periods are otherwise allowed in the filename) Beyond that, everything that
> I know of is legal. Inserting things like '*' is not recommended, because
> it's confusing, and harder to work with, but it's certainly legal. :)
>