Hello!

I am having trouble to understand ksh behaviour in context of patterns, 
parameters and the case-statements:

The following is what I expected:
------------------------------------------------
$ cat script1.sh
#!/bin/ksh
for file in foo bar baz; do
	case $file in
		foo) 	echo foo;;
		baz|bar) echo ba;;
		*)	echo default;;
	esac
done
$ ksh script.sh
foo
ba
ba
------------------------------------------------

But with a minor modification it does not work as expected:
------------------------------------------------
$ cat script2.sh
#!/bin/ksh
foopattern="foo"
bapattern="baz|bar"
for file in foo bar baz; do
	case $file in
		$foopattern)	echo foo;;
		$bapattern)	echo ba;;
		*)		echo default;;
	esac
done
$ ksh script2.sh
foo
default
default
------------------------------------------------
Note the parameters containing the patterns for the case statement.  
Apparently the | symbol does not do the desired magic within paramters.

Now, where is the meaning of the | as in script1.sh explained in ksh(1)?  
While very common usage, I could not seem to find it after several reads 
of that manpage.

Why does the version in script2.sh not work? In particular the patterns 
before ) in the case statement are -- according to ksh(1) -- subject to 
parameter expansion.

VWIW, this is NetBSD 3.1


Best regards, Martin

-- 
        Martin Bock                                          :wq