CentOS - May 2019 - bash off topic

I have a simple bash script it will take arguments from a file that has
quotes.

my file arg.txt would be this
-lt "*.txt"

my script file would be
LS_ARG=`cat arg.txt`
ls $LS_ARG

it does not run properly:
 sh -x ./arg.sh
++ cat arg.txt
+ LS_ARG='-lt "*.txt"'
+ ls -lt '"*.txt"'
ls: cannot access "*.txt": No such file or directory


How do I resolve that ?  If the quotes are not in my file it all works
fine. I think its because it looks like the extra single quotes it puts
around the "*.txt" - or - '"*.txt"'  - how do I do
this ?  This is just a
short example of my larger need.

Thanks,

Jerry

On Thu, 16 May 2019, Jerry Geis wrote:
> I have a simple bash script it will take arguments from a file that has
> quotes.
>
> my file arg.txt would be this
> -lt "*.txt"
>
> my script file would be
> LS_ARG=`cat arg.txt`
> ls $LS_ARG
>
> it does not run properly:
> sh -x ./arg.sh
> ++ cat arg.txt
> + LS_ARG='-lt "*.txt"'
> + ls -lt '"*.txt"'
> ls: cannot access "*.txt": No such file or directory
>
>
> How do I resolve that ?  If the quotes are not in my file it all works
> fine. I think its because it looks like the extra single quotes it puts
> around the "*.txt" - or - '"*.txt"'  - how do I
do this ?  This is just a
> short example of my larger need.
In general, shell utilities won't expand a wildcard within quotes 
(double or single). As I think you've discovered, this works fine:

echo '-lt *.txt' > argfile
ls $(< argfile)

I think you're going to need to provide a test case where the quotes 
are actually required.

-- 
Paul Heinlein
heinlein at madboa.com
45?38' N, 122?6' W

On Thu, 2019-05-16 at 12:57 -0400, Jerry Geis wrote:
> I have a simple bash script it will take arguments from a file that has
> quotes.
> 
> my file arg.txt would be this
> -lt "*.txt"
> 
> my script file would be
> LS_ARG=`cat arg.txt`
> ls $LS_ARG
> 
> it does not run properly:
>  sh -x ./arg.sh
> ++ cat arg.txt
> + LS_ARG='-lt "*.txt"'
> + ls -lt '"*.txt"'
> ls: cannot access "*.txt": No such file or directory
> 
> 
> How do I resolve that ?  If the quotes are not in my file it all works
> fine. I think its because it looks like the extra single quotes it puts
> around the "*.txt" - or - '"*.txt"'  - how do I
do this ?
I think it's to do with when the wildcard * is expanded. The expansion
is not done by 'ls', it is done by the shell - so when you do 'ls
*',
ls doesn't see just the single argument '*', it sees multiple
arguments
consisting of the filenames.  Using a simpler example, a shell script
'c' is:

   #!/bin/bash
   echo $#
   echo "1:" $1 
   echo "2:" $2

i.e. it displays the number of and the first two arguments:

   $ ./c *
   4
   1: a
   2: a2

So there are 4 arguments (not just one) because there are four files in
the directory.  

   You can turn off the expansion (aka globbing) with 'set -f'

   $ set -f ; ./c * ; set +f
   1
   1: *
   2:

   (But you also have to turn off globbing in the './c' script as well -
   that's a subshell and globbing isn't inherited

   #!/bin/bash
   set -f
   echo $#
      echo "1:" $1 
      echo "2:" $2

if you don't turn off globbing in the script, when $1 - which contains
'*' - is echoed, it is expanded at that point.)

Putting quotes around the "*" stops the expansion -  this is with
globbing turned off in the script:

   $ ./c "*"
   1
   1: *
   2:

Similarly, using ls:
   $ ls *
   a  a2  arg.txt	c
   $ set -f ; ls * ; set +f
   ls: cannot access '*': No such file or directory
   $ ls "*"
   ls: cannot access '*': No such file or directory

I don't know how this affects what you are trying to do though!

BTW, the single quotes you see when tracing the shell script is, I
think, just for display purposes, they aren't actually part of the
variables and are there just to show what is a single entity if there
is any doubt.

P.