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From: rhartman@thestepchild.sgi.com (Robert Hartman)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell
Subject: Re: Shell quoting problem. Passing a "?" parameter.
Keywords: sh, quoting
Message-ID: <1991May10.220136.5091@odin.corp.sgi.com>
Date: 10 May 91 22:01:36 GMT
References: <1991May10.062827.19863@lingua.cltr.uq.OZ.AU> <1141@cracklin.oat.bran.gnu.ai.mit.edu>
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In article <1141@cracklin.oat.bran.gnu.ai.mit.edu> pfalstad@phoenix.princeton.edu (Paul Falstad) writes:
>root@lingua.cltr.uq.OZ.AU (Hulk Hogan) wrote:
>>% sh
>>$ dm()
>>{
>>$*
>>}
>
>dm()
>{
>"$@"
>}
>
>>$ ls ?
>>1    4
>>$ dm "echo ?"
>>1 4
>
>$ dm "echo ?"
>?
>$ ...

In sh, if filename expansion fails, the pattern is taken as a literal,
so in Paul's example (the second above), there must not have been any
1-character filenames in the working directory.  I'm not sure how to
turn of globbing (filename expansion) in the Bourne shell, but that's
what needs to be done for this to work reliably.

Anybody recall how to do that?

-r