From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: "Bart Schaefer" <schaefer@brasslantern.com>
Message-Id: <990205202722.ZM26495@candle.brasslantern.com>
Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1999 20:27:22 -0800
To: Sweth Chandramouli <sweth@astaroth.nit.gwu.edu>, zsh-users@math.gatech.edu
Subject: Re: Globbing in a function (was Re: globbing for links in pathnames)
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X-Mailing-List: <zsh-users@sunsite.auc.dk> 2110

On Feb 5,  6:48pm, Sweth Chandramouli wrote:
} Subject: Globbing in a function (was Re: globbing for links in pathnames)
}
} (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: *(*)

Remember what I said a couple of postings ago about parameter expansion?
When a parameter is replaced by its value, the string is not tokenized.
Thus BINLIST=($1(*)) is effectively the same as BINLIST=("*"(*)).  If
you use the ~ flag on the parameter expansion, tokenization is done and
you'll get the glob you expect.

Also, you don't need the = in ${=BINLIST} because BINLIST is already an
array.  If you ever try to binlink a file with spaces in its name, that
extra word-split will bite you.

Finally, "ln -s" isn't going to do the right thing unless you give it a
full path (or one relative to /usr/local/bin, which could be computed if
you really work at it, but a full path is easier).

So, change the function to

    binlink () {
	BINLIST=($~1(*)) eval 'for BIN in $BINLIST ; do 
	    ln -s $PWD/$BIN /usr/local/bin ;
	done'
    }

and it should work.

However, a better way to write that particular function would be:

    binlink () {
        argv=($^~==*(*))
	ln -s "$PWD/$^@" /usr/local/bin
    }

Can you figure out what that's doing?

-- 
Bart Schaefer                                 Brass Lantern Enterprises
http://www.well.com/user/barts              http://www.brasslantern.com