Need help on bracketed strings

[pulboron]

Hi there,

I encountered a weird error in Linux. Here's how it went:

In our 4-server environment, 3 servers are having unexpected outputs when executing an echo command for a bracketed string particularly with a capital letter N. Does anyone know how to fix this? We might have different settings in our 4 boxes.

Samples:

SERVER 1:

>echo [N]
[N]

>echo [sampleNcommand]
[sampleNcommand]


SERVER 2-4:
>echo [N]
N

>echo [sampleNcommand]
N

I'd really appreciate me if there's any solution to output the correct string.

Here are the uname -a output for each server (I modified the hostnames):

SERVER 1:
Linux TSERVER1 2.6.9-78.0.13.ELsmp #1 SMP Wed Jan 7 17:45:52 EST 2009 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

SERVER 2:
Linux TSERVER2 2.6.9-78.0.13.ELsmp #1 SMP Wed Jan 7 17:45:52 EST 2009 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

SERVER 3:
Linux TSERVER3 2.6.9-78.0.13.ELsmp #1 SMP Wed Jan 7 17:45:52 EST 2009 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

SERVER4:
Linux TSERVER4 2.6.9-78.0.13.ELsmp #1 SMP Wed Jan 7 17:45:52 EST 2009 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Thanks a lot in advance!

[Rubberman]

The square bracket is a single character match wildcard in the shell. If nothing matches, then echo will show then entire thing including the brackets. If there is a file or directory that matches (in your case the file or directory name would be named N) then only the matched name is echoed. For example, if you executed "echo [NTV]" and there was a file/directory named N, T, or V, then all matches would be echoed. In your case, only one letter is inside the brackets, so it would only match a file/directory named N. If you want to echo [N] always, and not match files, then you need to use backslashes before the brackets. Example "echo \[N\]". I hope this helps.

[pulboron]

Hi Rubberman, tried looking for the N file and it's there in the three servers. Thanks a lot!