On Saturday 15 May 2004 07:05, Colin Watson wrote: > On Sat, May 15, 2004 at 06:31:18AM -0400, richard lyons wrote: > > BTW, why "grep '^ii.*'". WHat does the ".*" usefully add? > > Nothing. > > > and the single quotes? I expected, and got, the same response with > > either or both omitted. > > '*' is a metacharacter to the shell: if you'd happened to have any files > in the current directory whose names started with '^ii.' for whatever > reason, or if you had the shell option 'nullglob' set, then "grep ^ii.*" > would have gone wrong. You may feel this is unlikely, but it's good > style to quote metacharacters nonetheless. > > There are no metacharacters in ^ii alone, so quoting there is > unnecessary.
Thanks, Colin. I use these things so little that I get vague about them. That is a nice clear explanation, which I shall keep. -- richard -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
