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Wildcards in file input to a script?

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# 1  
Old 11-09-2012
Wildcards in file input to a script?
I have four files:

test
test2
test3
test4

I have this simple script:

Code:
#!/bin/bash
ls $1

Why does ./the_script.sh test* only list the first file, when a normal ls test* would list all four? What do I need to change in the script to be able to use wildcard?
# 2  
Old 11-09-2012
Because test* is expanded to test, test1, test2, test3, etc., where $1 is test. $@, not $1, would list all the files beginning with "test".
# 3  
Old 11-09-2012
The * character needs to be escaped:

Code:
./the_script.sh test\*
test  test2  test3  test4

# 4  
Old 11-09-2012
Quote:
Originally Posted by Scott
Because test* is expanded to test, test1, test2, test3, etc., where $1 is test. $@, not $1, would list all the files beginning with "test".
I assume I could get that into a for loop...?
# 5  
Old 11-09-2012
And best to put $@ in double quotes:
Code:
ls "$@"

# 6  
Old 11-09-2012
Quote:
Originally Posted by KidCactus
I assume I could get that into a for loop...?
Yes, you could do that.

Code:
$ cat myScript
for F in "$@"; do
  echo $F
done

$ ls filename*
filename1	filename2	filename3

$ ./myScript filename*
filename1
filename2
filename3

# 7  
Old 11-09-2012
What if would do kind of the same thing but with grep, where I would use multiple arguments, and still wanted to use wildcard for the filenames?
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