Re: ! in Dired--what was the outcome?

[Richard Stallman]

    {} might be a good replacement for ? since AFAIU its planned use
    doesn't depend on surrounding whitespace, but the problem is still
    unsolved for *.

We don't have a problem to solve for *.  We don't need
to do anything besides switch from ? to {}.

      Currently the marked file names are substituted for
    the * only if * is surrounded by whitespace.  But what if someone
    wants to use the names of all marked files with * not surrounded
    by whitespace, e.g.

    ! some_external_program --files='*'

If you find such a situation, just put in whitespace:

    ! some_external_program --files=' * '

I don't see how there could ever be a reason you
would need to do this with no whitespace.