Re: Generating file lists

[Ralf Wildenhues]

* NightStrike wrote on Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 07:24:36PM CEST:
> On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 1:22 PM, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> >  SYSHEAD_LIST=`echo $srcdir/include/sys/*.h`
> >
> > or
> >  set x $srcdir/include/sys/*.h
> >  shift
> >  SYSHEAD_LIST="$*"
> 
> Which is more autoconfy-correct?

Both have drawbacks and advantages.  The first has a problem if $srcdir
starts with a hyphen (not realistic; that would break lots of other
places as well) or has other special characters; you could use AS_ECHO
instead though as a remedy.  The second does not fork, which is nice.
But note that inside a macro, $* has relevance to M4, so you might need
to write $][* or $[]*, depending on quotation level.

> > This is purely a shell question.
> 
> Well, doing it my way worked fine on the command line, both in bash
> and sh, so I was confused.

But the expansion that you hoped to happen did in fact only happen later
in your testing.  Try this on the command line:
  f=*
  echo "$f"
  echo $f

Cheers,
Ralf