Globbing in a function (was Re: globbing for links in pathnames)

[Sweth Chandramouli <sweth@astaroth.nit.gwu.edu>]

On Thu, Feb 04, 1999 at 09:07:55PM -0800, Bart Schaefer wrote:
> On Feb 4, 11:22pm, Sweth Chandramouli wrote:
> } so it should end up something like the following:
> } 
> } x=(pkgs/*(@)) ; ls -d ${^x}/man(/)
> 
> The reason I used the eval was to avoid having x remain set after the
> command completes.  `x=(*(@)) eval ...` will unset x again at the end
> of the eval, and won't destroy any existing value of x.

	i have a function that i use to link executables from where i
normally install them to (usually /opt/wherever) to /usr/local/bin.
i was trying to rewrite it using this sort of format (rather than
invoking find, as i was doing before), but am running afoul of something
that i can't quite figure out.  the i've hacked out some stuff at the
beginning (to allow me to pass it options) for the sake of clarity; the 
interesting part is this:

(astaroth)~/.zfunc: BINLIST=(*(*)) ; echo $BINLIST ; unset BINLIST
binlink cwhois gpid mck newm newterm nobrs perf xbuffy xt xtitle
(astaroth)~/.zfunc: which binlink
binlink () {
        BINLIST=($1(*)) eval 'for BIN in ${=BINLIST} ; do 
      ln -s ${BIN} /usr/local/bin ;
   done'
}
(astaroth)~/.zfunc: binlink \*                                    
zsh: no matches found: *(*)

	putting an echo in at the end confirms that BINLIST in
the function is, when binlink is given an escaped asterisk as
its argument, being set to (*(*)); since parameter expansion
occurs before filename generation, why doesn't setting BINLIST
to that value in the function do the same thing that it does
from the command line?

	-- sweth.

-- 
Sweth Chandramouli
IS Coordinator, The George Washington University
<sweth@gwu.edu> / (202) 994 - 8521 (V) / (202) 994 - 0458 (F)
<a href="http://astaroth.nit.gwu.edu/~sweth/disc.html">*</a>