An odd difference between "cat file" and "cat<file"

[Alan S. Driscoll]

>>  I frankly don't know why there is a difference between cat ab* and
>>  cat <ab*.  It seems to me that file name expansion should be done
>>  before anything else.

>  So tell me, what would you expect to see if ab* matched two or more
>  files?

I would have expected an error message, of course.  I would also have
expected an error message after typing

	cat < abc abd

In fact, both sh and csh silently ignore 'abc'.  (Surprise!)

-- 
	Alan S. Driscoll
	AT&T Bell Laboratories