Expansion of patterns

Expansion of patterns

[Hugo Haas]

Hi.

I've been wanting to expand patterns that do not match filenames. For
example:

  echo a1 a2 a3

could be (hopefully) written:

  echo a[1-3]

However, I get:

  zsh: no matches found: a[1-3]

I sure can do:

  (for i in $(seq 1 3); do echo a$i; done)| xargs echo

but it clearly isn't as simple, and it works for simple cases but
wouldn't work in complex ones.

Is there any way to expand patterns like this in a simple way?

Cheers,

Hugo

-- 
Hugo Haas - http://larve.net/people/hugo/

Re: Expansion of patterns

[J]

> I've been wanting to expand patterns that do not match filenames. For
> example:
> 
>  echo a1 a2 a3
> 
> could be (hopefully) written:
> 
>  echo a[1-3]
> [...]
> Is there any way to expand patterns like this in a simple way?

For this one you can just write a{1..3} which should work the way you
expect. Note that it does keep leading zeroes, so that a{01..03} will
produce
a01 a02 a03.

-- 
J
"- Watashi, DATE-tte hajimete datta no...
 - Sou kai ?
 - Hontou wa suki na hito to surun deshou ?" -- Tokugawa Asuka