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wildcards in path

 
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# 1  
Old 09-17-2009
wildcards in path
Is there some rule about using wildcards in path? Say I want to create a file, but one of the directories in the path is called 1433d.default and on different machines it will be called <some other string>.default

Code:
touch ~/Library/Application/*.default/myfile

In theory I thought that should work, but it doesn't like the * wildcard. Any help please?
# 2  
Old 09-17-2009
Shell expansion doesn't expand to anything that doesn't exist, so it won't expand that directory unless myfile already exists.

You could do something like
Code:
DIR=~/Library/Application/*.default
if [ ! -d "$DIR" ]
then
        echo "Application defaults not found"
        exit 1
fi

touch "${DIR}/myfile"

# 3  
Old 09-17-2009
no you can't use single touch command to create a file in recursive manner in different dir's
# 4  
Old 09-17-2009
so if I wanted to do an ls or cd or some other command, the wildcard in the path is ok, but not for single touch command?
# 5  
Old 09-17-2009
As I explained, shell globbing can't find things that don't exist yet.
Code:
$ mkdir a b c d
# a/q, b/q, c/q, d/q don't exist yet, so globbing won't work
$ touch [abcd]/q
touch: cannot touch `[abcd]/q':  No such file or directory
$ touch a/q b/q c/d q/q
# Since these files already exist, it will find them
$ touch [abcd]/q
$

But, as I also explained, globbing can find a directory. It can find ~/Library/Application/*.default, just not ~/Library/Application/*.default/file-I-want-to-create-but-does-not-yet-exist.
# 6  
Old 09-19-2009
allright. let's go other way:
if you want to run the command
Code:
touch ~/Library/Application/*.default/myfile

you gotta be sure that shell will expand the wildcard and will find exact location to create the file.
To make sure just type:
Code:
echo ~/Library/Application/*.default

What you got ?
 
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