[Cialug] [OT]: Shell script globbing

[Major Stubble]

What shell are you using?

ksh doesn't seem to have any issue with your first attempt:

cthulu at rlyeh> touch file.bad
cthulu at rlyeh> if [ -e *.bad ]; then echo bad; fi;
bad
cthulu at rlyeh> touch file2.bad
cthulu at rlyeh> touch file3.bad
cthulu at rlyeh> if [ -e *.bad ]; then echo bad; fi;
bad
cthulu at rlyeh> echo $SHELL
/bin/ksh

On Dec 20, 2007, at 11:21 AM, Daniel A. Ramaley wrote:

> I have what should be a simple shell scripting problem. If any .bad
> files exist, then the script should do some stuff (display an  
> error, do
> some cleanup, and exit, though for testing i've simplified it). So far
> i've come up with 2 solutions, one requiring a variable and running
> "ls", the other requiring a seemingly superfluous "for" loop. Is  
> there a
> more elegant solution i've not discovered?
>
> My first attempt, doesn't work because -e expects only 1 argument and
> there may be multiple .bad files:
>     if [ -e *.bad ] ; then
>         echo Bad
>     fi
>
> My first working solution, letting ls handle the glob and doing a  
> string
> comparison on the result:
>     GLOB=`ls *.bad 2> /dev/null`
>     if [ -n "$GLOB" ] ; then
>         echo Bad
>     fi
>
> My second solution; the "if" is required because if no .bad files  
> exist
> the loop will still run once with file set to the literal "*.bad":
>     for file in *.bad ; do
>         if [ -e $file ] ; then
>             echo Bad
>         fi
>     done
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> --
> Dan Ramaley                            Dial Center 118, Drake  
> University
> Network Programmer/Analyst             2407 Carpenter Ave
> +1 515 271-4540                        Des Moines IA 50311 USA
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