Re: Globbing inside conditional expression

[Peter Stephenson <pws@xxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 26 Feb 2010 10:18:01 +0000
Ben North <ben@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > Actually [[ -f XX* ]] is invalid because [[ ]] doesn't do globbing.
> > You need the [ -f XX* ] form (see below).
> 
> answering my question.  Apologies for the noise.
> 
> Perhaps the documentation could be clarified though?

It's sort of implied by the fact that patterns are used for other reasons
in conditions, though as the XX* in the -f isn't a pattern there's room for
ambiguity in interpreting the documentation as it stands.

I suppose it's obvious, but globbing would produce multiple files, and then
a lot of the tests don't really make sense.  What does [[ -d XX* ]] mean if
some expansions are directories and some aren't?

Index: Doc/Zsh/cond.yo
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/zsh/zsh/Doc/Zsh/cond.yo,v
retrieving revision 1.8
diff -p -u -r1.8 cond.yo
--- Doc/Zsh/cond.yo	19 Jan 2010 10:20:16 -0000	1.8
+++ Doc/Zsh/cond.yo	26 Feb 2010 10:52:01 -0000
@@ -183,9 +183,10 @@ enditem()
 
 Normal shell expansion is performed on the var(file), var(string) and
 var(pattern) arguments, but the result of each expansion is constrained to
-be a single word, similar to the effect of double quotes.  However, pattern
-metacharacters are active for the var(pattern) arguments; the patterns
-are the same as those used for filename generation, see
+be a single word, similar to the effect of double quotes.
+File generation is not performed on any form of argument to conditions.
+However, pattern metacharacters are active for the var(pattern) arguments;
+the patterns are the same as those used for filename generation, see
 ifzman(\
 zmanref(zshexpn)\
 )\


-- 
Peter Stephenson <pws@xxxxxxx>            Software Engineer
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