licensecheck currently applies $opt_check_regex to all command line
arguments if there are more than one.  This is very counter-intuitive:

  $ touch foo
  $ licensecheck *
  foo: *No copyright* UNKNOWN
  $ touch bar
  licensecheck *
  $

I'd argue that $opt_check_regex should never be applied to the command
line; I'm not aware of any tools that silently ignore such arguments.
(The point could also be made against $opt_ignore_regex.)
--- /etc/devscripts.conf ---

--- ~/.devscripts ---
DEBCHANGE_RELEASE_HEURISTIC=changelog
USCAN_SYMLINK=rename
DEBCOMMIT_STRIP_MESSAGE=yes

was that it allowed to say "what is the license of this file", even if
that single file did not match the default set of files which are
checked.

Admittedly, the same may be achieved using "licensecheck -c . $file".

This might be losing something in translation. :-) Given that
licensecheck is a command line tool, how can those options /not/ "be
applied to the command line"?

Regards,

Adam

Makes sense.  My beef is that it suddenly goes away when I ask "what is
the license of these two files".

I would draw a parallel with ls(1): if I type "ls" or "ls <dir>", I
expect that some entries in <dir> will be ignored by default.  However,
if I explicitly ask "ls .bashrc", I now expect that file to be listed,
with or without "-a".

IOW, it's line 261 that I'm against, not line 256.  :)

I understand what you mean, and can see the logic.

However, the parallel doesn't quite map, as "licensecheck" on its own
currently gives usage instructions, rather than being equivalent to
"licensecheck .".

My concern is whether people currently expect "licensecheck *" on a
directory containing many files to actually inspect every single file or
only those which match the default regex.  If the expectation is the
latter then I'm not sure where to go from there, given that the script
can't tell the difference between you calling "licensecheck *" and
"licensecheck filea fileb filec ... filezz".

Regards,

Adam

Good morning,

 Attached please find your PDF account statement and invoice as of 05/11/2023. Please notice you have a past due balance  for invoice IN0099203.

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