Shell Programming and Scripting

If you are doing parameter parsing you should consider using the bash getopts function:

Code:

while getopts :de opt
do
    case $opt in
        d) echo "You selected option d" ;;
        e) echo "You selected option e" ;;
        *) echo "Illegal option -$OPTARG" >&2
           exit 1
        ;;
    esac
done
shift $((OPTIND-1))

echo "The rest of the arguments are: $@"

With a recent bash or ksh you could also use:

Code:

if [[ "$x" =~ ^-[de]$ ]]
then echo match
else echo no match
fi

Note, however, that if you're using code like this to parse command line options, I strongly encourage you to use getopts instead. It makes it much easier to behave like standard utilities where you can specify the two options -d and -e with any of the following four equivalent command lines:

Code:

utility -d -e
utility -e -d
utility -de
utility -ed

Obviously this type of parsing can be done with ifs and/or cases, but why reinvent the wheel.

All other observations aside, with regards to extended globbing, with your shell version, pilnet101's suggestion should work if you specify

Code:

shopt -s extglob

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