[ILUG] Shell quoting mystery

[Darragh Bailey]

On Fri, May 23, 2008 at 03:29:32PM +0100, Lars Hecking wrote:
> 
> > The problem is that \* is not converted to * during variable expansion.
> > For that to occur you need to explicitly evaluate the command again by
> > prepending the `find` command line with `eval`. I.E.
> > 
> > eval find /home ....
> 
>  Doesn't seem to work:
> 
> ++ eval find /home -type d -name .snapshot -prune -o -type f '\(' -name 'core.\*' -o -name core -o -ctime +2 -name '.nfs\*' -o -name .xsession-errors '\)'
> +++ find /home -type d -name .snapshot -prune -o -type f '(' -name 'core.*' -o -name core -o -ctime +2 -name '.nfs*' -o -name .xsession-errors ')'
> 
>  But it must be related to the prentheses surrounding the expression.
>  Using \( or ')' lets eval fail, so I used '\)', with the result above.
>  "\(" will also not work.

I'll grant you that it doesn't remove the quotes, but with the \*
resolved to * that shouldn't be an issue anymore. It may not be solved
the way you expected, but it looks to me like it is solved.

FINDRX_C="-name core.\* -o -name core"
FINDRX="${FINDRX_C}${FINDRX_N}${FINDRX_X}"
d="${HOME}"

eval find ${d} -type d -name .snapshot -prune -o -type f \\\( ${FINDRX}
\\\)

After running "touch core core.o" in ~, the script above has no problems
in finding the two files.

So what's missing?


-- 
Darragh

"Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool."