Re: variable expansion inside string

[Peter Stephenson <p.stephenson@samsung.com>]

So really what you're trying to do is: given a variable "a" containing
exactly the literal characters

*$file*

(however they got there) expand any variable references, but nothing
else.

The nearest I can think of is:

print -r -- "${(e):-$a}"

That won't be limited to just variables, it'll do other sorts
of expansion, but it won't do globbing, and you don't have the
hairiness of an "eval".

pws