CODEWITHSUNDEEP
zsh
Maxim Sloyko
Maxim Sloyko

Reputation: 15856

Zsh is not expanding path in variable

I want to put path with globs in a variable in zsh and later use it in various commands, but can't figure out how to do that...

└➜  path_var="expansion_test/{loc,diff-loc}*"

But if I try to use the variable, I get an error:

┌~/temp 
└➜  ls -l $path_var
ls: cannot access expansion_test/{loc,diff-loc}*: No such file or directory
┌~/temp 
└➜  ls -l $~path_var
zsh: no matches found: expansion_test/{loc,diff-loc}*

This is no matches found error is really strange though:

┌~/temp 
└➜  ls -l expansion_test/{loc,diff-loc}*
expansion_test/diff-loc:
total 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 maxims eng 0 Jul 24 11:10 some13
-rw-r--r-- 1 maxims eng 0 Jul 24 11:10 some5
-rw-r--r-- 1 maxims eng 0 Jul 24 11:10 somefile
-rw-r--r-- 1 maxims eng 0 Jul 24 11:10 something

expansion_test/loc1:
total 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 maxims eng 0 Jul 24 11:09 testfile1
-rw-r--r-- 1 maxims eng 0 Jul 24 11:09 testfile2
-rw-r--r-- 1 maxims eng 0 Jul 24 11:09 testfile3
-rw-r--r-- 1 maxims eng 0 Jul 24 11:09 testfile4

expansion_test/loc2:
total 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 maxims eng 0 Jul 24 11:09 testfile10
-rw-r--r-- 1 maxims eng 0 Jul 24 11:09 testfile5
-rw-r--r-- 1 maxims eng 0 Jul 24 11:09 testfile6
-rw-r--r-- 1 maxims eng 0 Jul 24 11:09 testfile7
-rw-r--r-- 1 maxims eng 0 Jul 24 11:09 testfile8

What am I doing wrong?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 682

Answers (1)

Adaline Simonian
Adaline Simonian

Reputation: 4808

The reason why your expansion is working is that brace expansions don't expand in double-quotes. Also, to use the brace expansion and set it to a variable in one go, you'll need to wrap it in parentheses.

Try this:

$ path_var=("expansion_test/"{loc,diff-loc}*)
$ echo $path_var
expansion_test/diff-loc expansion_test/loc1 expansion_test/loc2

Upvotes: 5

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