Mfcttrf

Say I have two scripts:

• 
  

  script1.sh:

  
  
  

  #!/bin/bash
  version=2.6
  log_file="$HOME/log-file-version-$version.log"
  
  touch $log_file &>/dev/null
  
  echo "log to my log file from script 1" >> $HOME/log-file-version-?.?.log
  
  gnome-terminal --tab --active --title="script2" -- sh script2.sh
  

  
  


• 
  

  script2.sh:

  
  
  

  #!/bin/bash
  
  echo "log to my log file from script 2" >> $HOME/log-file-version-?.?.log
  

  
  

I run script1.sh.

I'm left with two log files in my home:

log-file-version-2.6.log
log-file-version-?.?.log

log-file-version-2.6.log contains:

log to my log file from script 1

log-file-version-?.?.log contains:

log to my log file from script 2

which means that in script 1 the wildcards from line 7 (>> $HOME/log-file-version-?.?.log) were correctly interpreted, but when a script is run with sh these wildcards don't work.

Why is that and how can I fix this?

I need to use wildcards because I don't want to be passing arguments from shell script to shell script and I want them to be self-sufficient.

I'm using Ubuntu and running these scripts from the default terminal which is gnome-terminal.

i believe it is because the ? wildcard is a bash feature, not shell (sh).

Try running

gnome-terminal --tab --active --title="script2" -- bash script2.sh

When you run ./script1.sh it defaults to using bash as instructed on the 1st line. However, when you run sh script2.sh you use the shell to interpret the commands, and it ignores the recommendation from the 1st line.

The bash manual has this to say in the 3.6 Redirections section:

The word following the redirection operator in the following descriptions, unless otherwise noted, is subjected to brace expansion, tilde expansion, parameter expansion, command substitution, arithmetic expansion, quote removal, filename expansion, and word splitting. If it expands to more than one word, Bash reports an error.

sh does not do that: from the POSIX shell specification

If the redirection operator is "<<" or "<<-", [...]. For the other redirection operators, the word that follows the redirection operator shall be subjected to tilde expansion, parameter expansion, command substitution, arithmetic expansion, and quote removal. Pathname expansion shall not be performed on the word by a non-interactive shell; an interactive shell may perform it, but shall do so only when the expansion would result in one word.

$ dash
$ echo foo > *
$ ls
'*' README.md ...

$ bash
$ echo bar >> *
bash: *: ambiguous redirect