Re: echo *********a takes forever

Chenzhong Wang <[email protected]> [2002-08-06 14:47:47 -0400]:
> I ran into the problem with RHLinux 7.2 ksh.
> 
> echo ********t
> 
> takes very long time. The more *s, the longer.
> I put doublequote around it to workaround.

That is probably not unusual.  The '*' is a shell metacharacter and
any shell metacharacter should always be quoted or the shell will act
upon it.

This is from the pdksh documentation.

       Note that the following characters are also treated specially
       by the shell and must be quoted if they are to represent
       themselves: \, ", ', #, $, `, ~, {, }, *, ? and [.

Also, ksh is not a program of GNU sh-utils.  You are probably using
the public domain ksh (aka pdksh) which is not part of the GNU project
software.  The last address I have for pdksh is:

  ftp://ftp.cs.mun.ca/pub/pdksh/pdksh-5.2.14.tar.gz

I recommend that you try GNU bash.  :-)

Bob