<div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 9:48 AM, Colin Law <<a href="mailto:clanlaw@googlemail.com">clanlaw@googlemail.com</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;"> I have a problem with filename expansion in a script and am having difficulty understanding what is going on. In a terminal, if I enter ls {a*,b*} I see all files beginning with a or b (I know this is not the best way of doing that but it is a simple example of the problem I am seeing). If I put that line in a file test.sh, make it executable, and then type ./test.sh then I see the same result. However if at the start of test.sh I put the line #!/usr/bin/env sh at the start of test.sh and then run it I get ls: cannot access {f*,l*}: No such file or directory It seems that brace expansion is not being performed in this case. If I just use wildcards it is ok, it is the braces that cause the problem. In order to determine whether a different shell was running for some reason I also put finger -l in the script, and in both cases, with and without the shebang line, it showed /bin/bash as the shell. If, however, I put #!/bin/bash at the start then it works, still showing /bin/bash as the shell. Can someone explain what is going on? </blockquote></div> Yes, your default shell is probably /bin/bash, which is why your console entry works. By specifying the use of 'sh' you get a shell from /bin/dash (note bash vs dash). If you specify "#!/usr/bin/env bash" instead, your script will work much like your console. ...Ken