Globbing/pathname expansion with colon as separator

Question

How can I convert a string containing glob characters such as

/var/lib/gems/*/bin

into a colon-separated string of filenames (i.e. PATH com

Answer 1

without saving IFS and command substitution

dirs=(/var/lib/gems/*/bin) ; IFS=: eval 'dirs="${dirs[*]}"'

Answer 2

Actually, I thought of a better solution: use a shell function.

function join() {
    local IFS=$1
    shift
    echo "$*"
}

mystring=$(join ':' /var/lib/gems/*/bin)

Answer 3

PATH="$(printf "%s:" /usr/*/bin)"
PATH="${PATH%:}"

Answer 4

This should do it for you:

dirs=(/var/lib/gems/*/bin)    # put filenames (dirnames) in an array
saveIFS=$IFS IFS=':'          # set the Internal Field Separator to the desired delimiter
dirs=("${dirs[*]}")           # convert the array to a scalar with the new delimiter
IFS=$saveIFS                  # restore IFS

Answer 5

Another oneliner: printf "%s\n" /var/lib/gems/*/bin | paste -s -d':'

But @timo's answer is better in my opinion.

Answer 6

No need to mess with IFS, zsh can join arrays with a simple variable flag:

dirs=(/var/lib/gems/*/bin(N))
dirs=${(j.:.)dirs}

The (N) on the first line suppresses a warning if there are no files; the (j.:.) joins the array with :s. Works with 0, 1, or multiple matches.