Hi Chet Thanks for your very prompt reply.
I understand that globbing is happening, but I don't understand why deleting a parameter should occur with nullglob set if the parameter matches but the word to delete doesn't. The bash behavior seems to make this construct useful only for file name deletion if nullglob is set, when it seems to be useful for any substring deletion if nullglob is unset. I also noticed in the POSIX standard that quoting the word part should cause it to be literal and prevent globbing. If I try this in bash, I get the same result as in my original message, that is: $ shopt -s nullglob $ connectioninfo='${HOST%%".*"} ${USER}' $ echo $connectioninfo ${USER} I think $connectioninfo should remain unchanged due to the word being quoted, and wonder if bash supports this quoting syntax. _______________________________________________ Bug-bash mailing list Bug-bash@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-bash