Thanks for that little tid-bit. I've used the find command for about two years and never discovered this before except when the wild card is in front it caused a problem and I'd use quotes. I don't think I've ever searched for a file from a directory that contained one matching the pattern before. I never knew it expanded the wild card before it searched. Gotta be the old DOS mentality.
Thanks again. On Thu, 8 May 1997, Craig Sanders wrote: > > On Thu, 8 May 1997, Rick Jones wrote: > > > panther# cd ../kdm* > > panther# pwd > > /usr/src/kde/kdm-0.4.4 > > panther# find /usr -iname kfdial* > > /usr/src/kde/kdm-0.4.4/kgreeter/kfdialog.cpp > > /usr/src/kde/kdm-0.4.4/kfdialog.cpp > > try putting quotes around kfdial*. > > e.g. > find /usr -iname "kfdial*" > > Without the quotes, the kfdial* argument MATCHES the file kfdialog.cpp > in the current directory (/usr/src/kde/kdm-0.4.4), and that is what is > passed to find as an argument. > > You're even taking advantage of this behaviour when you issue commands > like "cd ../kdm*" > > > > [...deleted...] > > > > Now why can't "find" see the kfdialog.h/.moc files from the kdm directory > > but it sees them from kdelibs directory? > > > > I am not happy about this. Does anybody have a clue? > > it's not a problem with find, it's a problem with the user :-) > > if you don't put quotes around wildcard characters (like "*" and "?") > then your shell will attempt to expand the wildcard BEFORE passing the > arguments to the program. If any files in the current directory match the > wildcard then they get passed as arguments, otherwise the wildcard itself > is passed. > > e.g. if you execute the command "foo *.c" there are two possible sets of > arguments passed to program foo: > > 1. in a directory with NO .c files, foo gets "*.c" > 2. in a directory with fred.c, joe.c, etc.c, foo gets "fred.c joe.c etc.c" > > correct quoting and escaping of characters with ", ', and \ is very > important in any shell, and also in many scripting languages like > sed, awk, perl, and others. it is definitely a good use of any unix > user/admin's time to learn how it works. > > a quick summary: > > use \ to escape a single character. e.g. \*, \? > > use " to quote an entire string, allowing $ substitution. > e.g. "s/$SEARCH/$REPLACE/" > > use ' to quote an entire string. e.g 's/ */ /g' > > you can use combinations of the above too. e.g. you can include a quote > within a quoted string like so: '\'hello\'' is 'hello' > > > I don't know if it's still in print, but a good basic book for > explaining how the shell works is "The UNIX System" by S.R. Bourne > (the same Steve Bourne for whom bash is named). Published 1983 by > Addison-Wesley. > > Similar information can be found in the various Unix FAQs, and probably > in some of the Linux Doc Project stuff. > > IMO, the best way of learning this stuff is to play with it > interactively. > > craig > Have a good one, --Rick [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
