Re: Glob Qualifier Yn enables short-circuit mode behaves oddly

[Peter Stephenson <p.w.stephenson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> On 11 March 2022 at 14:12 zzapper <zsh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 11/03/2022 13:50, Mikael Magnusson wrote:
> > On 3/11/22, zzapper <zsh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >> Hi
> >>
> >>   > print *(.omY3)
> >>
> >> notebash.txt note132.txt note020.txt
> >>
> >> I don't know why it's selected those 3 files but it always does
> >>
> >>
> >> Yn
> >>
> >>      enables short-circuit mode: the pattern will expand to at most n
> >>      filenames. If more than n matches exist, only the first n matches in
> >>      directory traversal order will be considered.
> >>
> >>      Implies oN when no oc qualifier is used.
> > You've included the answer in your mail, Y3 will stop looking at files
> > after finding 3 in directory traversal order, those 3 files are then
> > sorted according to their modification timestamp. If you want to
> > consider all files in the directory, use [3] instead of Y3.
> 
> So what then is traversal order?

It's totally arbitrary -- whatever the OS throws up.  That's the point
of this optimisation --- you've told the shell you don't care what's
there, you're just interested in there being something.  I think the
technical answer is likely to be "inode order".

Typical usage of this feature is with a 1 to grab one file that might
be the only one (but if it isn't you don't care).

pws