On Wed, 9 Feb 2005, James B. Byrne wrote:
> On 9 Feb 2005 at 19:59, Dag Wieers wrote:
>
> > Please do not add the * in workmv, but add it to the cmdline. Like:
> >
> > xargs -i mv ./mqueue/*'{}' ./mqueue/offline
> >
> > The quotes around {} escapes the wildcard, so it loses its
> > special meaning. I would used ?? (or {df,qf}) instead of *, but
> > it makes no big difference.
>
> Ok, I cut out the leading '*' from the work file and used the
> following command:
>
> # cat workmid | xargs -i mv ./mqueue/*'{}' ./mqueue/offline
> mv: cannot stat `./mqueue/*j18IrbIn002131': No such file or
> directory
>
> #ll ./mqueue/*j18IrbIn002131
> -rw------- 1 root root 1150 Feb 8 13:53 ./mqueue/dfj18IrbIn002131
> -rw------- 1 root smmsp 1817 Feb 8 13:54 ./mqueue/qfj18IrbIn002131
> #
>
> Now what is wrong?
Well, normally glob expansion is the shells work and I would have guessed
(hoped) xargs would perform that for you, but it does not.
This is a good example why I usually don't write (even simple) scripts in
bash. There are too many things you have to know and too many
pitfalls and it often is more like trial-and-error programming :) There
are other ways you can make it work like:
cat workmid | xargs -i mv ./mqueue/df'{}' ./mqueue/qf'{}' ./mqueue/offline
But either you understand what's going on and adapt to that when it's
necessary or shell scripting is simply not your thing. It's not my thing.
-- dag wieers, dag at wieers.com, http://dag.wieers.com/ --
[all I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power]