python 2.7.12 on Linux behaving differently than on Windows

[BartC]

On 06/12/2016 21:44, Gregory Ewing wrote:
> BartC wrote:

>> And the justification? Well, %ENVIRONMENTVARIABLE% gets converted in
>> Windows, so why not?!
>
> No, the justification is that the Unix convention allows
> the shell to provide certain useful functions that Unix
> users value.
>
> If you don't want those functions, you're free to write
> your own shell that works however you want. Complaining
> that everyone *else* should want the same things you
> want is not reasonable.

How does that work?

Suppose I provide an assortment of applications that would work better 
if wildcards are expanded.

Do I then have to provide one more application, a shell, to be run first 
if someone wants to run any of my applications? Which they then have to 
quit if they want to run some other programs that depend on wildcard 
expansion.

(Actually at this point I haven't got a clue as to how Unix applications 
are distributed. I guess it's not as simple as just providing a binary 
executable. For the moment, I'm using C source code as every Unix system 
has a C compiler. I suppose it could be Python source too, but I doubt 
if my interpreters written in Python will run quite as briskly -- I find 
C slow enough for this purpose.)

-- 
Bartc