From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-ID: <df49a7370801300504h107bec5bid8b9de7dc422577c@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 13:04:58 +0000
From: "roger peppe" <rogpeppe@gmail.com>
To: "Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs" <9fans@cse.psu.edu>
Subject: Re: [9fans] quouteing(?) problems in rc
In-Reply-To: <pan.2008.01.30.12.07.36.725653@ericsson.com>
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References: <pan.2008.01.30.12.07.36.725653@ericsson.com>
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>         grep -n -e '''' ^  '^' ^ $func ^ '''' $file /dev/null

your problem is that you're constructing a list containing quotes
suitable for input to the shell, but you really want to construct
a list containing values suitable for arguments to grep.
i think what you want is:

grep -n -e '^'^$func $file /dev/null

which of course will only work correctly if $func contains no
regexp metacharacters, but i'm sure you know that.