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Full Discussion: How do I pass a wild card as an argument
Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers How do I pass a wild card as an argument Post 302112492 by eja on Wednesday 28th of March 2007 10:31:03 AM
Old 03-28-2007
How do I pass a wild card as a variable
Hi,

I would like to pass a wild card as part of an argument. But when I do it the script views the wild card as text.
Example:
sFile=MG1A*
sort $sFile > $sFile.sorted

What I get is MG1A*.sorted

The problem is I am passed a series of files where the first few characters like "MG1A" are constant. The additional part of the file name is a date time stamp. I will never know the exact date time stamp. I need to do a search for MG1A* which will find me one file. How can I write my script so the variable $sFile will know that the "*" in MG1A* is a wild card not text?

I know I can write code to run "ls" on a directory and get all file names then write a loop or do statement to do my sort based upon that list regardless of the file name. But I have more files in the dir than I want to grab. I also know I can run the "ls" command output the file names in the dir to a file and grep for the part fo the file names I am looking for. I also think this can be done if I pput the whole comamnd iBut current design restricts me form going that path. It would require a whole re-write and I am trying to avoid that.

Thank you.
Last edited by eja; 03-28-2007 at 11:37 AM..
 

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LEARN ABOUT REDHAT

card

CARD(1) 								FSF								   CARD(1)

NAME

       card - print reference card of program options

SYNOPSIS

       card [OPTION]... PROGRAM...

DESCRIPTION

       Print a reference card of the PROGRAMs thanks to their inline help.

OPTIONS

       -h, --help
	      display this help and exit

       -v, --version
	      display version information and exit

       -o, --output=FILE
	      save the output in FILE

       -l, --language=LL
	      print the help in the language LL (default: English)

       --command=CMD
	      perform pretty-printing on the output of CMD (e.g. --command='netscape -help')

       Options for a2ps are given after `--', for instance

	      $ card -lfr a2ps -- -Pdisplay -4

       News, updates and documentation: http://www.inf.enst.fr/~demaille/a2ps/

AUTHOR

       Written by Akim Demaille.

REPORTING BUGS

       Report bugs to <bug-a2ps@gnu.org>.

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright (C) 1997-99 Akim Demaille, Miguel Santana
       This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICU-
       LAR PURPOSE.

SEE ALSO

       a2ps(1), card(1), fixps(1), pdiff(1), psset(1), texi2dvi4a2ps(1).

       The full documentation for card is maintained as a Texinfo manual.  If the info and card programs are properly installed at your site,  the
       command

	      info card

       should give you access to the complete manual.

card 1.3 (GNU a2ps 4.13)					   February 2000							   CARD(1)
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