avoid errors on expansion failure

avoid errors on expansion failure

[Eric Smith]

I wanted to scp recent files of certain types and the command failed if there
were no expansions that met the conditions like this;
[eric@bigmac ~] $ scp p:'*.{pptx,ppt,docx,doc,xlsx,xls,pdf,html,txt}(m-30)' .
zsh:1: no matches found: *.ppt(m-30)
[eric@bigmac ~] $ scp p:'*.{pptx,docx,doc,xlsx,xls,pdf,html,txt}(m-30)' .
zsh:1: no matches found: *.xls(m-30)
[eric@bigmac ~] $ scp p:'*.{pptx,docx,doc,xlsx,pdf,html,txt}(m-30)' .
zsh:1: no matches found: *.html(m-30)
[eric@bigmac ~] $ scp p:'*.{pptx,docx,doc,xlsx,pdf,txt}(m-30)' .
foobar.pptx          100%  348KB 347.5KB/s   00:00

How do I make the command ignore this and to run first time?

-- 
Eric Smith

Re: avoid errors on expansion failure

[zzapper]

Eric Smith <es@fruitcom.com> wrote in
news:mailbox-19078-1402649032-929168@pepper.0.0.200: 

> I wanted to scp recent files of certain types and the command failed
> if there were no expansions that met the conditions like this;
> [eric@bigmac ~] $ scp
> p:'*.{pptx,ppt,docx,doc,xlsx,xls,pdf,html,txt}(m-30)' . zsh:1: no
> matches found: *.ppt(m-30) [eric@bigmac ~] $ scp
> p:'*.{pptx,docx,doc,xlsx,xls,pdf,html,txt}(m-30)' . zsh:1: no matches
> found: *.xls(m-30) [eric@bigmac ~] $ scp
> p:'*.{pptx,docx,doc,xlsx,pdf,html,txt}(m-30)' . zsh:1: no matches
> found: *.html(m-30) [eric@bigmac ~] $ scp
> p:'*.{pptx,docx,doc,xlsx,pdf,txt}(m-30)' . foobar.pptx          100% 
> 348KB 347.5KB/s   00:00 
> 
> How do I make the command ignore this and to run first time?

don't know if this helps your case
> 
/tmp > touch fred.jpg

/tmp > ls *.{jpg,gif}(N)

fred.jpg

/tmp > ls *.{jpg,gif}

ls: cannot access *.gif: No such file or directory

fred.jpg



However watchout if *.{jpg,gif} returns nothing it will list all the 
files!!


-- 
zzapper
https://twitter.com/dailyzshtip

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Re: avoid errors on expansion failure

[Eric Smith]

Thank you ...

> > How do I make the command ignore this and to run first time?
> 
> don't know if this helps your case
> > 
> /tmp > touch fred.jpg

Nope, you are just updating the timestamp on the file, thereby
over-riding the time specification.

Eric

Re: avoid errors on expansion failure

[Mikael Magnusson]

On 13 June 2014 15:13, Eric Smith <Eric.Smith@biovolt.nl> wrote:
> Thank you ...
>
>> > How do I make the command ignore this and to run first time?
>>
>> don't know if this helps your case
>> >
>> /tmp > touch fred.jpg
>
> Nope, you are just updating the timestamp on the file, thereby
> over-riding the time specification.

You probably misunderstood the whole point then, touch creates a file
only for the purpose of demonstrating the commands that follow.
However, I would recommend using the (foo|bar|baz) syntax rather than
{foo,bar,baz} as it is a single glob expression that doesn't need any
additional (N) flags to not fail and no caveat when none of the
patterns match.

-- 
Mikael Magnusson

Re: avoid errors on expansion failure

[Eric Smith]

Mikael Magnusson wrote on Fri-13-Jun 14  3:34PM
> >> don't know if this helps your case
> >> >
> >> /tmp > touch fred.jpg
> >
> > Nope, you are just updating the timestamp on the file, thereby
> > over-riding the time specification.
> 
> You probably misunderstood the whole point then, touch creates a file
> only for the purpose of demonstrating the commands that follow.

Indeed, I just saw "touch" and was put off (without reading
the rest). 

Thanks to you both.

Eric