yum downgrade?

[Les Mikesell]

On Fri, 2006-06-09 at 13:57 +0100, Timothy Murphy wrote:
> >>> If you normally run "yum update" you can change your procedure to simply
> >>> run "yum --exclude=dovecot* update".
> >> 
> >> Don't you have to say "yum --exclude=dovecot\* update" ?
> > 
> > I've never had to escape the * in this situation.  YMMV,
> 
> I stand corrected.
> I assumed the shell would try to expand the "*",
> and when it could not would either give a warning or omit the argument.

If it can't substitute a matching wildcard filename expansion it passes
the original text unchanged.

> But I've never really understood the subtleties of bash.

I'd probably quote it like:
yum --exclude='dovecot*' update
as a matter of habit to emphasize that I don't want any substitutions,
but in this case double quotes or \ escaping would all be the same.

It's worth spending some time learning a few details about shell
variable/wildcard substitutions and i/o redirection.  The basics
haven't changed in decades and they can save you a lot of work.

-- 
 Les Mikesell
   lesmikesell at gmail.com