Guys, I'm either misunderstanding how to control expansion of wildcards on the command line when passing the parameter containing the wildcard as a cli option to a script or the bash controls to allow that are broken. I want to set up a little script alias to search /var/abs for packages and I want the ability to pass either 'name' or 'name*' or '*name*' as input, but if there is anything matching in the current directory, expansion happens before the cli is passed to the script. Reading, I should be able to turn globbing off with either 'set -f' or 'set -o noglob' and then I should be able to pass the parameter contained a wildcard to the script without any pathname expansion. That appears broken -- or my logic is broken. From man bash 'set -f' or 'set -o noglob on' should prevent expansion: set [+abefhkmnptuvxBCEHPT] [+o option] [arg ...] <snip> -f Disable pathname expansion. <snip> -o option-name The option-name can be one of the following: <snip> noglob Same as -f. EXAMPLE: touch pacman-foo then use the following as your test script (tst.sh): #!/bin/bash myvar="$1" printf "Search: %s\n" $myvar exit 0 Now since i have a file called pacman-foo in my directory trying to pass 'pacman*' should result in expansion before the cli is read resulting in: 00:42 nirvana:~/scr/arch/tmp> ./tst.sh pacman* Search: pacman-foo single-quoting doesn't even protect the cli?? : 00:42 nirvana:~/scr/arch/tmp> ./tst.sh 'pacman*' Search: pacman-foo Now try 'set -f' to disable pathname expanstion: 01:00 nirvana:~/scr/arch/tmp> set -f 01:02 nirvana:~/scr/arch/tmp> ./tst.sh pacman* Search: pacman-foo 01:02 nirvana:~/scr/arch/tmp> ./tst.sh 'pacman*' Search: pacman-foo Huh? Now try 'set -o noglob' 01:02 nirvana:~/scr/arch/tmp> set -o noglob 01:03 nirvana:~/scr/arch/tmp> ./tst.sh pacman* Search: pacman-foo 01:04 nirvana:~/scr/arch/tmp> ./tst.sh 'pacman*' Search: pacman-foo Huh? Again.. What gives is it bash or is it something I'm reading wrong? -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 Telephone: (936) 715-9333 Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 www.rankinlawfirm.com