[SOLVED] Explain me the meaning of this line in shell script

antriksh · 01-05-2013, 12:35 PM

Code:

for file in /{,usr/}bin/*calc

Above line is used to find all executable files ending in "calc" in /bin and /usr/bin directories. in the article it is said that ',' is used to concatenate strings. Can anyone explain this in little detail how ',' is concatenating strings here?

druuna · 01-05-2013, 12:44 PM

The {,usr/} part consists of 2 strings. One being usr/ (part after the comma), the other is "empty" (the part before the comma).

This, for example would list /bin and /sbin:

Code:

ls -l /{bin,sbin}/

And this lists /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin and /usr/sbin:

Code:

ls -l /{,usr}/{bin,sbin}/