While discussing:
> # yum install kde\*devel
Timothy Murphy wrote:
>
> As a matter of interest, does one have to "escape" the '*' as above?
> I haven't seen that in the yum documentation I've read.
It's not yum documentation you should be looking at.
You type things into the shell, the shell interprets them, then hands
them on to the appropriate command. cp, mv, ls, and the rest have no
concept of *: if you do a ls test* on a directory with test1 and test3
in it, the shell will expand "test*" into "test1 test3" and pass that on
to ls.
So if you do a yum install kde*devel in a directory containing the file
"kde-stuff-will-not-compile-without-devel", then what yum actually
*sees* is "yum install kde-stuff-will-not-compile-without-devel".
Which is probably not what you wanted.
Quoting the asterisk means that the shell won't interpret it, and it
will get handed over to yum. Yum *does* know what to do with it.
The moral of this and various other stories is that if you don't want
the shell to interpret an asterisk, you quote it.
Hope this helps,
James.
--
E-mail address: james | "Drums must never stop. Very bad if drums stop."
@westexe.demon.co.uk | "Why? What will happen if the drums ever stop?"
| "Bass solo."
