[SOLVED] Using wildcards in bash if statement

Issue

I wrote the following code in the bash shell. It's supposed to take the positional parameter and, if it starts with a dash "-", print an error message. For some reason the if statement always gets skipped. It only works if I literally input -*.

I get the impression that the fix has something to do with the $.

EXECNAME=$1
if [ "$EXECNAME" = "-*" ]; then
       echo "error: invalid executable name"
fi

Solution

You can use double square brackets [[ and ]] without use of quotes on matching pattern for glob support in BASH:

[[ "$EXECNAME" = -* ]] && echo "error: invalid executable name"

Answered By - anubhava

Answer Checked By - Timothy Miller (WPSolving Admin)