How to Install Xfce on FC4?

[Paul Howarth]

Basil Copeland wrote:
> I just finished installing xfce on a second machine with a fresh
> install of FC4.  Thanks to this discussion, it was a much smoother
> process.  What worked for me was putting the quotes around "xfce*" in
> 
> yum install "xfce*"
> 
> For my edification, could someone explain to me why
> 
> yum install "xfce*"
> 
> or
> 
> yum install xfce*\ 

That's:

$ yum install xfce\*

> would work, but not
> 
> yum install xfce*
> 
> ???

It's due to the way that the your shell expands globbing characters like 
"*". In this case, you want yum to see the globbing characters, not the 
shell (hence the quoting to "protect" the globbing characters from 
behing expanded by the shell).

To see for yourself what's happening, change to a directory containing 
files whose names start with "xfce" and try each of the above commands, 
replacing "yum" with "echo". You'll see the actual commands you're 
issuing after shell globbing has taken place. Then try it again in a 
directory that does not contain any files starting with "xfce". You'll 
see that the first two options give the same result, but the third does not.

Paul.