How to assign a glob expression to a variable in a Bash script?

Question

When the following two lines of code are executed in a bash script, \"ls\" complains that the files don\'t exist:

dirs=/content/{dev01,dev02}
ls -l $dirs
         


        

Answer 1

Since you want to glob files, you shouldn't use brace expansions. Using brace expansion in this case is an antipattern and definitely the wrong tool for the job.

What you want is extended globbing:

shopt -s extglob # likely already set in interactive shells

dirs=/content/@(dev01|dev02)
ls $dirs