[oclug] set $PATH

[Patrick Smith]

Bruce Harding wrote:
> When setting $PATH can I use a wild card?
> 
> I.E.  export PATH=$PATH:/opt/OpenOffice.org*/program
> 

Assuming you are using bash and there are no special characters in the 
directory names, you could try this:

export PATH=$PATH:$(ls -d /opt/OpenOffice.org*/program | tr \\12 :)

Note that the expansion happens when you set $PATH, not when you run a 
program.

I can't think of any way to get a wildcard directly in the assignment to 
work correctly.  The problem is that the shell will look for paths 
including the PATH=$PATH: part.  (One can set IFS=: in order to have the 
directories separated by colons instead of spaces in the expansion.)