[GTALUG] Help need in bash

[mwilson at Vex.Net]

> On 2018-05-31 03:00 PM, Stewart Russell wrote:

> 	convert *.{png,jpg}
>
> does *something*, but neither what you'd expect nor want)

Multics had an "equal name" feature that conspired with the star-name
parser to do what you would expect.  A program like convert could have
used it like

        convert *.png =.jpg

Name components that were matched by '*' could be retrieved to replace '='
in building a new file name.  It probably only worked because star-names
weren't expanded by the command shell.  Each command program parsed its
own command line (with heavy use of standard subroutines.)  That way, the
program had control over what command line arguments were being matched
together.