UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

We have a script that runs in ksh on HP-UX 11.11. It takes three arguments. The last argument can be a filename or wildcard character. For example:

Code:

script -s hello -t goodbye '*.d*'

In a case such as this, I would wrap single quotes around the final argument because I dont want the shell to attempt to expand it. I want the string *.d* to get passed to the script.

The problem:

If there is a filename that matches the pattern of the final argument, that filename(s) get passed onto the script, instead of *.d*
How do I make sure the string I put in the command line gets passed on, no matter what is in the current directory?

Inside the script, you should be ok if you always have double quotes around that argument. But you can turn off wildcard expansion with:
set -o noglob

This is an annoyingly complicated script. I can't turn off wildcard expansion because there may be wildcards in another parameter. I put some echo statements into the script and found that the *.d* gets passed into the script literally with no problem. The script then passes the arguments into a function like so:

fa $*

That function then expands the wildcard (which I dont want it to do). If I put double quotes around $* as such:

fa "$*"

It gets passed into the function unexpanded (*.d*). Great!

But the tricky part is then I call getopts within function fa, which treats all parameters as one because of the double quotes. So I'm back at square one

Turn off globbing.
Set the variables.
Turn on globbing
Expand the variable that needs expanding.

Code:

$
$ set -o noglob
$ x=f*
$ y=f*
$ echo "x = $x             y=$y"
x = f*             y=f*
$ set +o noglob
$ echo "x = $x             y=$y"
x = f*             y=f*
$ x=$(echo $x)
$ echo "x = $x             y=$y"
x = faqs fileperms first.file form funky             y=f*
$

Excellent. It worked. Thanks for the explanation.