Can't stop shell interpreting special characters

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

I am struggling with the following sample code:

array1=(a b c d)
array2=(* * * *)

print ${array1[2]}
print ${array2[2]}

It returns 'c' and the name of a file in the directory I'm in.

I can't for the life of me work out how to prevent the shell interpreting the '*' and just get it to return the plain character ... is there a way to do this?

Also, my Learning the Korn Shell book lists several sed-like functions you can use to edit variable names, e.g.

variable=string
variable=${variable/g/gs}
print $variable

returns 'strings'. But Sed has a function where you can 'store' part of the pattern matched, and get it back in the replacement string, e.g.

print $variable | sed "s/\(strin\)g/\1/"

returns 'strin'. Does the Korn shell have a similar feature that's not in my book?

2

Q1: Turn globbing off (set -f) before assigning * to an array element; turn it on again after you are done (set +f)

set -f
set -A array * * * *
set +f

Q2: Maybe I don't understand what you want to do but variables in Korn shell can be manipulated by using sed so, at a minumum, you can do something like this:

variable=$(print $variable | sed "s/\(strin\)g/\1/")
3

That sed-like variable manipulation arrived in ksh95. You are probably using ksh88.