please explain yum list to me...

[Michael Schwendt]

On Sat, 14 Feb 2009 09:50:41 -0500, Chris wrote:

> 
> On Sat, 2009-02-14 at 06:51 -0700, Linuxguy123 wrote:
> > Why is this ?
> > 
> > $ yum list *synaptics*
> 
> It's a good idea to quote any arguments with wildcards in them, e.g.:
> 
> 	yum list "*synaptics*"
> 
> Otherwise, if you have a local file (or files) containing "synaptics" in
> the name, the shell will substitute the name(s) into the command before
> executing it, and you won't get what you want.

Not exactly. If the local file (or files) only contain "synaptics", the matching
file names will be passed to Yum, and it won't find packages with that name:

  $ touch foo-synaptics-fubared
  $ yum list *synaptics*
  Error: No matching Packages to list

This is the same as running "yum list foo-synaptics-fubared". There is
only one special case, a local file with the name "synaptics", which
_is_ a package name:

> $ yum list *synaptics*
> Loaded plugins: fastestmirror
> Installed Packages
> synaptics.x86_64                    0.14.6-3.fc8   installed
> 
> Bash globbed the name *synaptics* and replaced it with the filename
> "synaptics". Quoting the argument gives the desired result:

Therefore it only finds package "synaptics".