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I have been trying to search for a file which contains a specific pattern. The pattern is itself in a variable tmpfl

echo $tmpfl --> ack_2*

Now to find for the file in the current working directory itself I have been trying to use 

find . -name $tmpfl

find . -name ($tmpfl)

but none of them seem to work . Though

find . -name ack_2*

works like a charm .

What is wrong in the approach ? It's simple variable substitution in Unix , right ? So what am I missing ?

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You need to put "" around your variable.

find . -name "$tmpfl"
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  • I don't think that quoting matter here. Double quotes is used only when variable contains whitespaces. BTW, find -name $tmpfl works for me. – Arkadiusz Drabczyk Nov 24 '14 at 13:17
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    @ArkadiuszDrabczyk. No. double quote is used always. Leaving out the quotes is when you want the split+glob operator (nothing to do with spaces except for the split part if $IFS happens to contain space) to be invoked upon the expansion (in list contexts). In this case though, find . -name $tmpfl with the default value of IFS and tmpl containing act2_* would be equally wrong as find . -name act2_* as that glob would (could) be expanded in both cases. – Stéphane Chazelas Nov 24 '14 at 13:49
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I have found there are certain situations (besides whitespace or unprintable characters) that require the double quotes around the -name parameter, regardless of whether the parameter is a variable or a hard-coded value. Always good to get in the habit of using them.

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    Leaving a variable expansion unquoted in list contexts in POSIX shells is the split+glob operator. Situations where you actually want that are very rare (and here is definitely not one), so variable expansions should generally be quoted. – Stéphane Chazelas Nov 24 '14 at 13:53

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