[SOLVED] find quotation \* substitution weird behaviour

doru · 07-30-2022, 01:23 AM

Code:

$ ls
'fil*'   file   file1   test.sh
$ cat test.sh
set -x
arg=fil\\*

[ -f fil\* ] && rm fil\*
find . -name $arg

touch fil\*
find . -name $arg

set +x
$ . test.sh
++ arg='fil\*'
++ '[' -f 'fil*' ']'
++ rm 'fil*'
++ find . -name 'fil\*'
++ touch 'fil*'
++ find . -name 'fil*'
./fil*
./file1
./file
++ set +x

For the first find, bash finds no file to expand fil\* to, and find again finds no file to fit fil\*.
For the second find, bash does expand fil\* to fil*, and find then finds fil*, file1 and file to fit fil*.

teckk · 07-30-2022, 02:41 PM

Globs 'fil*', should not be a file name. * is a special character that expands in the shell.

You can force it. Still not good.

Code:

touch 'file*'

This will find everything with file<something> in the name.

Code:

find . -name file*
find . -name "file*"
find . -name 'file*'

This will find everything

Code:

find . name file\*

This will find it.

Code:

find . -name "file\*"

arg="file\*"
find . -name "$arg"

http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashGuide/SpecialCharacters

michaelk · 07-30-2022, 03:15 PM

The \ is the escape character and preserves the literal value of the * character. It does not perform any wildcard expansion.
The command touch fil\* creates the file named fil* and that is why you see 'fil*' in the output of the ls command.

Code:

[ -f fil\* ] && rm fil\*
find . -name $arg
touch fil\*

++ '[' -f 'fil*' ']'
++ rm 'fil*'
++ find . -name 'fil\*'

Since fil* actually exists it is deleted by the rm command and therefore why the find command does not find the file but then you create it again using touch.

Since there is no wildcard expansion rm does not delete file or file1 therefore show up with the second execution of the find command because the \ is not included.

MadeInGermany · 08-02-2022, 04:07 AM

Please stick to the rule
"put double-quotes around a $variable in command arguments"!

Code:

find . -name "$arg"

Things become more clear if the shell substitutes it but does not run any further expansions.
Note that find itself runs a glob filename generation on a -name pattern.