On Wed, May 03, 2017 at 10:22:57PM +0200, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> FWIW, a trick to see what's really going on is to prepend an echo
> before all that:
>
> echo find /home/richard -type d -name .*
>
> (for the example above). Of course you won't think of that if you
> are't suspecting shell expansion in the first place, but I find
> it very instructive to see what the shell is "seeing". That'll
> help memory for the next time (it does for me, at least).
Yeah, that's a good start. I actually have a little script I wrote,
called "args":
wooledg:~$ cat bin/args
#!/bin/sh
printf "%d args:" "$#"
printf " <%s>" "$@"
echo
It's similar to echo, but gives a bit more feedback.
wooledg:~$ args echo *.txt
6 args: <echo> <equipment.txt> <gistfile1.txt> <items.txt> <rename.pl.txt>
<TWL06.txt>
wooledg:~$ args "" '' '{}' '"' "'"
5 args: <> <> <{}> <"> <'>
Yet another basic tool you can use for certain kinds of analysis.
Like, when you're learning just how bad ssh is at certain things like
preserving arguments:
wooledg:~$ ssh localhost bin/args echo "a quoted string with spaces"
wooledg@localhost's password:
6 args: <echo> <a> <quoted> <string> <with> <spaces>
"Oh, so THAT'S why it's breaking!"
(cf. http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ/096)
