Re: Inconsistent handling of patterns with backslah (`\`) escaping

Grisha Levit <[email protected]> Mon, 1 Jun 2026 11:24:24 -0400

Newsgroups	gmane.comp.shells.bash.bugs
Message-ID	<CAMu=BrrJtg_4PXYWmPXkwm7SV21yhr_wfjhm9Qk4WbM=qGjUYw@mail.gmail.com>

On Mon, Jun 1, 2026, 11:14 Chet Ramey <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> On 6/1/26 6:54 AM, Andrei Borzenkov wrote:
> > On Sun, May 31, 2026 at 5:32 PM Andreas Schwab <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> >> Because '\*' is not a glob, so filename expansion is not performed.
> >>
> >
> > Actually it is. Pathname expansion is performed on the result of the
> > parameter expansion and pathname expansion interprets the current
> > content of the word in question as pattern:
>
> It's not, since the `*' in the word is not "treated as special" with
> respect to pattern matching.

Or maybe one could say that pathname expansion is "performed," but is a
no-op, per #4 of the list in 2.14.3:

    If a specified pattern does not contain any '*', '?' or '['
    characters that will be treated as special, the pattern string
    shall be left unchanged

https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/utilities/V3_chap02.html#tag_19_14_03