Question

My question is very similar to How to copy multiple files from a different directory using cp?

I don’t want to use an explicit loop. Here is what I do:

$ FILES_TOOLS="fastboot,fastboot-HW.sh"
$ cp $HOME/tools/{$FILES_TOOLS} $TOP_DIR/removeme
cp: cannot stat `/home/johndoe/tools/{fastboot,fastboot-HW.sh}': No such file or directory

The files are present and destination is valid, because:

$ cp $HOME/tools/{fastboot,fastboot-HW.sh} $TOP_DIR/removeme
$ echo $?
0

• I tried to remove the double quote from FILES_TOOLS, no luck.
• I tried to quote and double quote {…}, no luck
• I tried to backslash the brackets, no luck
• I guess this is a problem of when the shell expansion actually occurs.

Answer 1

This answer is limited to the bash.

Prepend an echo to see what your cp command turns into:

echo cp $HOME/tools/{$FILES_TOOLS} $TOP_DIR/removeme

You have to insert an eval inside a sub-shell to make it work:

cp $( eval echo $HOME/tools/{$FILES_TOOLS} ) $TOP_DIR/removeme