Re: wasted disk space

[Paul Slootman <paul@murphy.nl>]

On Tue 03 Oct 2000, Philip Brown wrote:

> > bash lets you do great stuff : for i in /dev/sda{1,5,6,7} is faster
> 
> sh is pretty cool too, dont forget :-)
> 
> Get in the habit of using POSIX compliant syntax for shellscripts.
> It will help everyone in the long run.
> 
> for f in /dev/sda[1567]

This only works for single character things, and when what you're
trying to expand is in the filesystem.

Try this in sh:

	cp verylongfilename{,.orig}

or:

	for i in {a,b,c,d,e}; do
	    for j in {0,1,2,3,4}; do
		echo $i-$j
	    done
	done

Of course this is a silly example, but I've used things like this
before usefully. OTOH, I agree that avoiding such things is
generally a good idea (esp. in scripts where saving a couple of
keystrokes isn't that important), however for interactive work
it's a pretty nifty feature.


Paul Slootman
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