[vox-tech] shell question: globbing and command arguments

[vox-tech@lists.lugod.org]

On Mon 03 Nov 03,  8:59 AM, Mitch Patenaude <mrp@sonic.net> said:
> To be more general, you should escape the *, and then it gets passed
> to the remote scp, which is smart enough to handle it (it actually uses
> the shell on the remote machine to do the globbing.)
> 
> If you're using older shells (real bourne shell, csh, etc.) then the
> unescaped * will cause an error (unless you 'set noglob' in csh).
> Bash is smart enough to realize that if no local globbing works, that
> it should just be passed on to the underlying program,
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

i didn't know that, but it's consistent in what i see with scp.

so if i have "backup.*" in my local directoy, my example wouldn't work?
i'll check that out.

thank you!
pete

> for instance:
> 
> [mrp@calisto mrp]$ echo frobble*
> frobble*
> [mrp@calisto mrp]$ echo f*
> fern.jpg ffjuser30 flash forAudrey forte4j fun
> [mrp@calisto mrp]$ csh
> [mrp@calisto ~]$ echo frobble*
> echo: No match.
> [mrp@calisto ~]$ set noglob
> [mrp@calisto ~]$ echo frobble*
> frobble*
> [mrp@calisto ~]$
> 
> Thus endeth the unix history lesson :-)
> 
>   -- Mitch
> 
> On Monday, Nov 3, 2003, at 08:37 US/Pacific, p@dirac.org wrote:
> 
> >i've always wondered about this...
> >
> >if i have a bunch of files on a remote host beginning with "backup", i
> >can copy them to the local host using:
> >
> >   scp p@remote.host:backup* .
> >
> >and it works.  but why?  doesn't the shell get to "*" first?  i'd
> >understand this working:
> >
> >   scp 'p@remote.host:backup*' .
> >
> >but why does scp see the asterisk in the unquoted version?
> >
> >pete

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