[rfc idle thought] exclude pattern left anchor

[jw schultz]

A thought has been nagging me for a bit now so i'll run it
up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes.

There seems to be quite a bit of confusion regarding the use
of the leading slash as a top of tree anchor for exclude
patterns.  The manpage seems clear enough to me but somehow
it doesn't seem to get through.

What if we allowed a leading circumflex (^) to serve the
same function.  We could then change the documentation to
reflect the newer usage.

People are used to a leading ^ meaning anchor-left.
It does have the disadvantage of making it difficult to
match filenames with a leading ^ but those are quite rare.

I wouldn't even think of such a change were it not for the
frequency with which people confuse the meaning of a leading
slash.

-- 
________________________________________________________________
	J.W. Schultz            Pegasystems Technologies
	email address:		jw at pegasys.ws

		Remember Cernan and Schmitt