Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
> Jan Danielsson <jan.m.danielsson@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
> > > 	for f in
> > > ~/backup/[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]-[0-9][0-9]-[0-9][0-9].gpg
> > 
> >    The problem is that I need to process all the files, even those
> > without a date -- it's just that I need to determine if they do
> > contain a date, because they are handled a little differently.
 
> for i in ~/backup/*
> do
> 	case `basename $i` in

Use of ${file##*/} looks actually better because it's a shell builtin unlike
basename unless you add this.

basename() {
	echo "${1##*/}"
}

I realize handling of /blah/ differs from /usr/bin/basename, doesn't matter
here though. That's more readable at least and lack of readability is IMHO
the real issue with most scripts be it Bourne Shell, Perl or whatever.

> 	[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]-[0-9][0-9]-[0-9][0-9].gpg) one variant

I was about to suggest similar

	case "$file" in *[1-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]-[0-1][0-9]-[0-3][0-9]*) ...;;
	...
	esac

-- 
Christian