Does anyone know of any usability studies into wildcards, and wildcard
standards? Had a look on the web and couldn't find anything apart from
'novice users don't understand or use wildcards' and 'expert users only use
basic wildcards'.
Best,
- h
Best,
- h
My mail address is jsachs177 at earthlink dot net.
And just what *is* the standard notation? As far as I can see, there areQuote:> I have no information, but a strong recommendation: if you DO use
> wildcards, use the standard notation.
Best,
- h
Beyond that, I would argue that wildcards should be optional. Pick a
reasonable default behavior, and allow users to use wildcards to refine
that behavior if they choose. What's 'reasonable' here depends a lot on
the data that's being searched and the pattern of use.
--S
--bks
My mail address is jsachs177 at earthlink dot net.
> The standard notation is that used by the Microsoft file system,
Also:
- The DOS wildcard mechanism has evolved over time. The original was
one of the worst ever conceived (hm, a quick search learns that
later ones may even be worse; for instance, see
<http://codeguru.earthweb.com/files/CAdvFind.html>
Please allow multiple occurrences of '?' and/or '*' in a search
term
- Should we really call this DOS wildcards:
- I think the use of '*' and '?' in regular expressions predates
DOS (possibly by a decade or more)
- Does the average user know about DOS nowadays?
Reinder
| The standard notation is that used by the Microsoft file system,
| unless you're designing for a specific environment where a plurality
| of users who use computers at all are most comfortable with something
| else.
hogwash.
Microsoft uses (as is its wont) its own syntax loosely (very) based on
regular expression syntax. regular expressions come from computational
theory. there are two widely used standards, POSIX 1003.2 is one and
the programming language Perl provides another one (which seems to
change with each new release).
if only Microsoft could use the same basis for its command interpreter
and its editing environments.
--
Rolf Lindgren http://www.roffe.com/
Do you really expect POSIX or Perl to be taken seriously as a de factoQuote:>| The standard notation is that used by the Microsoft file system...
>hogwash... there are two widely used standards, POSIX 1003.2 is one and
>the programming language Perl provides another one...
Which means that it is not a standard at all.Quote:>...(which seems to change with each new release)
My mail address is jsachs177 at earthlink dot net.
| Do you really expect POSIX or Perl to be taken seriously as a de facto
| standard with a better claim than Microsoft Windows?
yes, as a matter of fact I do - for any application more advanced than
the Windows shell.
[...] (on Perl's regexp)
| Which means that it is not a standard at all.
certainly. as a matter of fact, for any project that would seem to
require more knowledge of Perl than can be obtained in half an hour,
there is another language that is more appropriate.
--
Rolf Lindgren http://www.roffe.com/
Then you will be disappointed.Quote:>> Do you really expect POSIX or Perl to be taken seriously as a de facto
>> standard with a better claim than Microsoft Windows?
>yes, as a matter of fact I do
I think you have misinterpreted the term "standard" as it applies to
this thread. It does not mean "a design which authorities have agreed
to implement in products, which will therefore be learned and used by
users." It means "a design which a significant group of users already
understand, which will therefore be used if implemented."
I will guarantee you that apart from computer professionals, a vast
majority of users haven't a clue whether POSIX and Perl are software
components, hardware components, or rock groups. Nor can they be
induced to care.
My mail address is jsachs177 at earthlink dot net.
>> The standard notation is that used by the Microsoft file system,
> <nitpick>
> It's not the filesystem that implements wild cards, it's
> the command processor (in DOS, typically Command.COM)
> </nitpick>
the wildcard strings were passed to the .exe's for them to interpret.
hence no standard, each exe/com did what it wanted.
full story in dr dobbs journal, about 18 months ago, al steven's column.
</nitpick^2>
martin
> the wildcard strings were passed to the .exe's for them to interpret.
> hence no standard, each exe/com did what it wanted.
> full story in dr dobbs journal, about 18 months ago, al steven's column.
></nitpick^2>
As a point of information, though, DOS did have standard wildcard
processing in the form of a set of system calls. Thus applications
which supported wildcard processing at all had to go to considerable
trouble to do so in a non-standard way.
My mail address is jsachs177 at earthlink dot net.
Is there a difference between Oracle and MSS when using uniface <gold>?
I have the same uniface app running against a Oracle 8.1.6 DB (ora8141L.DLL)
and a
MSS 7.0 DB (mss7020L.DLL) with mapping 2.
I have a table with a varchar(200) field and there are 2 records in the
table
first with value 'A', second with value 'AA'
Whe using a retrieve profile <gold>?<gold>?, on Oracle, only the record
containing the value 'AA' is retrieved.
On MSS both records are retrieved.
Why?
Regards
Thomas
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