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From: dce@sony.com (David Elliott)
Newsgroups: gnu.bash.bug
Subject: Re: Bug report: quoted strings passed to functions
Message-ID: <1989Nov13.162429.12744@sony.com>
Date: 13 Nov 89 16:24:29 GMT
References: <1989Nov13.054213.24296@rpi.edu>
Reply-To: dce@icky.Sony.COM (David Elliott)
Distribution: na
Organization: Sony Microsystems Corp.
Lines: 24

In article <1989Nov13.054213.24296@rpi.edu> night@pawl11.pawl.rpi.edu (Trip Martin) writes:
>Configuration: bash 1.04.1, SysVR3.1, ATT 3B2/300
>
>bash$ grep() { egrep $* ; }
>bash$ grep 'foo bar' testfile
>egrep: bar does not exist

The bug is in the use of $*, not bash.  This is a common problem, caused
by a flaw in the design of the original sh.

Change that to

	grep() { egrep "$@" ; }

and it will work as expected.

Hey, Brian, maybe you could add a special mode to bash that would
print out warnings for all uses of $* and unquoted variable
references, or maybe someone could write "shlint". ;-)
-- 
David Elliott
dce@sony.com | ...!{uunet,mips}!sonyusa!dce
(408)944-4073
"You can lead a robot to water, but you can not make him compute."