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   Chris Siebenmann (cks@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 13-Jan-2025 14:11:29 JST Chris Siebenmann

   This is my face when I work out how the Research Unix V4 through V6 shell and /etc/glob handled quoting. It is a completely expected yet terrifying hack. (V3 is different and more limited.)

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     Chris Siebenmann (cks@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 13-Jan-2025 14:11:29 JST Chris Siebenmann

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     To do wildcard expansion, the shell in V1 through V6 ran '/etc/glob <command> <arg1> <arg2> <...>' if any of those arguments had wildcards; glob expanded wildcards and exec'd the command with the result. To quote characters (including wildcards), the V4 to V6 shell set the 8th bit on them during parsing, then stripped the 8th bit before exec(). Except when it exec'd /etc/glob, because /etc/glob needed to get quoted wildcards. So /etc/glob also stripped the 8th bit before it exec()'d things.

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.