Shell Programming and Scripting

I have to write a script to determine whether given command line argument ($1) contains "*" symbol or not, if $1 does not contains "*" symbol add it to $1, otherwise show message "Symbol is not required". For e.g. If we called this script q5 then after giving ,
$ q5 /bin
Here $1 is /bin, it should check whether "*" symbol is present or not if not it should print Required i.e. /bin/*, and if symbol present then Symbol is not required must be printed. Test your script as
$ q5 /bin
$ q5 /bin/*

what about the slash ?

Code:

echo -n "$1"
echo "$1" | grep -q '*' || echo '/*'

i tries ur code ..
echo -n "$1"
echo "$1" | grep -q '*' || echo '/*'
its prints :
for sh file.sh /bin
--> /bin/*

for sh file.sh /bin/*
--> /bin/alsacard/*

so can you plzz see that and tell me the reason for that , also suggest something else..

Homework?

Also, if you pass an unquoted asterisk on the command line, most shell automatically expand it to all files. So /bin/* gets expanded to (exemplary)

Code:

$ q5 /bin/test /bin/true /bin/false /bin/mount ...

No, this is not a homework.. i was facing problem in finding difficulty in printing /bin/*
(it always prints /bin/alsacrad/* ) thats why i posted a thread

As pludi told you, you should learn about the shell before you start writing shell-scripts.

Just try "echo /bin/*", you'll see where the alsacard comes from.

Your script will only see the * if no file corresponds to the pattern given on the command line.