[SAGA-RG] URLs and wildcards (was: More confusion)

[Hartmut Kaiser]

Thilo, 

> I did not receive any reply on our proposal for resolving the 
> wildcards issue.
> 
> May I safely interpret the silence as agreement?
> 
> I hereby make this the "final call" for comments on this issue.
> 
> Please speak up now, or hold your piece forever!
> 
> > B. Add versions of the methods copy, link, move, and remove 
> from ns_directory
> >    that accept a string parameter describing a pathname, 
> relative to the CWD,
> >    (possibly) containing POSIX-style shell wildcards.
> > 
> > Comparing both options, Ceriel and myself are in favour of B.
> > It comes with less methods and a simpler and more 
> obvious-to-use interface.
> > 
> > A is a very indirect solution where a user first has to 
> build a list 
> > of URLs from a wildcard string, and then has to pass this 
> list of URLs to, e.g., copy.
> > With B, the user can directly pass the wildcard string to, 
> e.g., copy.
> > The "trick" is that the string is restricted in its expressiveness, 
> > namely to pathnames relative to the CWD.

I agree B is the better way to handling things. But what's the rationale of
the 'relative to the CWD' clause? Do you want to ensure the call can be
completely handled by a single middleware (adaptor)? Wouldn't it be
sufficient to require that wildcard characters are alowed only in the
filename part of an otherwise well formed (perhaps partial) url?

Regards Hartmut