[SOLVED] Running ls with wildcard string

Issue

I was originally using this command, and it works fine (counting number of files with extension .sb):

ls -dq *.sb | wc -l

Output:

903

Now, I want to use a variable to store the string, like this:

search="*.sb"

Then, putting it all together:

# count files in directory with substring
search="*.sb"
ls -dq "$search" | wc -l

Output:

ls: cannot access *.sb: No such file or directory
0

This implies the string is being stored and retrieved correctly, but the command is not acting as expected. Could anyone explain this phenomenon to me?

Solution

Variable expansion is done before pathname expansion. See here for a similar situation.

Solution in this case: remove the quotation marks

search="*.sb"
ls -dq $search | wc -l

Answered By - danmohad

Answer Checked By - Gilberto Lyons (WPSolving Admin)