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From: das@lanai.cs.ucla.edu
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Idiom for $(ls -d $pattern 2>/dev/null)
Message-ID: <21939@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>
Date: 17 Mar 89 20:28:24 GMT
Sender: news@CS.UCLA.EDU
Reply-To: das@CS.UCLA.EDU (David Smallberg)
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department
Lines: 10

Do you have a favorite idiom for (ksh syntax):
	$(ls -d $pattern 2>/dev/null)
that does not involve invocation of a separate process and is not aesthetically
unpleasant?  The intent is that if any filenames match the pattern, then use
them; otherwise, use the null string.  This shows up when you want to say
	for f in *
(Which is not what you really want, since if the directory is empty, f takes on
the value "*").

-- David Smallberg, das@cs.ucla.edu, ...!{uunet,ucbvax,rutgers}!cs.ucla.edu!das