Globbing files with tilde

[Luc]

I rewrote my very old file system scanning code, which had been written
for Windows. When I migrated to Linux (looong time ago), I adopted
the `find' command.

The only problem I seem to have with it is that it won't find files
that begin with a tilde. I want them. I want ALL files.

Upon googling, I understand that [glob] likes to assume that the tilde
more often than not means the user's home directory. And I found this
thorough explanation by the illustrious Donal Fellows:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12152929/turn-off-tilde-substitution-in-filenames

Donal says:

"The simplest way to stop a leading ~ from being a problem is to put
./ in front of it, and to always use the -directory option to glob."

Well, my first version of the code was doing a [cd] before globbing
every directory so I changed that to always use the -directory option,
but that didn't solve the problem. Now I'm stumped and beg for your
help once again. The damndest thing is that the exact same [glob] line
works fine in Tkcon.

Here is my code:


set ::FILELIST {}
proc p.scan {path} {

;# SCAN FILES AND DIRECTORIES, HIDDEN OR NOT
set _ftypes {b c d f l p s hidden}

foreach type $_ftypes {
foreach _file [glob -nocomplain -tails -types $type -directory $path *] {

if {$_file == "."} {continue}
if {$_file == ".."} {continue}

set _filepath [file join $path $_file]

;# ADD FILE TO FILELIST
if {[file isfile $_filepath]} {
lappend ::FILELIST $_filepath
} else {
;# THIS LINE FOR DEBUGGING ONLY
if {! [file isdirectory $_filepath]} {puts $_filepath}
}

;# IF IT IS A DIRECTORY, GO INTO IT AND REPEAT PROCEDURE
if {[file isdirectory $_filepath] && [file type $_filepath] != "link"} {
p.scan $_filepath
cd ..
}
}
}
}


--
Luc
>>

[Rich]

Luc <n...@no.no> wrote:
> The only problem I seem to have with it is that it won't find files
> that begin with a tilde. I want them. I want ALL files.

Which 'it' do you mean, the GNU 'find' command, or TCL's 'glob'?

And for me, both seem to find files with tilde's just fine:

Test directory contents:

$ ls -1
end~
mid~dle
~begin

GNU find inside the test directory:

$ find -type f
./~begin
./mid~dle
./end~

TCL's glob inside the same test directory:

$ rlwrap tclsh
% join [glob *] \n
~begin
mid~dle
end~
%

Both found files with tilde's at the beginning, in the middle, and at
the end.

[Christian Gollwitzer]

Am 11.12.22 um 05:06 schrieb Luc:

> I rewrote my very old file system scanning code, which had been written
> for Windows. When I migrated to Linux (looong time ago), I adopted
> the `find' command.
>
> The only problem I seem to have with it is that it won't find files
> that begin with a tilde. I want them. I want ALL files.
>
> Upon googling, I understand that [glob] likes to assume that the tilde
> more often than not means the user's home directory.

It is worse than that: ALL commands working on files expand the leading
tilde into home directories. Thankfully, this misfeature will be removed
in Tcl9 https://core.tcl-lang.org/tips/doc/trunk/tip/602.md

But "glob" returns the ~files unmodified, therefore this does not work:

foreach fn [glob *] {
lappend fds [open $fn]
}

Here, a ~file in the current directory will lead "open" to fail.

> foreach _file [glob -nocomplain -tails -types $type -directory $path *] {
>
> if {$_file == "."} {continue}
> if {$_file == ".."} {continue}
>
> set _filepath [file join $path $_file]
>
> ;# ADD FILE TO FILELIST
> if {[file isfile $_filepath]}

I think that the bug is in here. "file isfile" and "file join" fail due
to the ~problem:

(kbskit) 50 % file join /temp ~test
~test

You need to do:

(kbskit) 51 % file join /temp ./~test
/temp/~test

But beware that this is not always what you want to do: In case the
second part really is an absolute path (can't happen in your case now),
you don't want the prefix:


(kbskit) 55 % file join /temp /test
/test
(kbskit) 56 % file join /temp .//test
/temp/./test

Christian