Shell script calling ssh: how to interpret wildcard on remote server - shell

Question

I work on a certain customer environment on a daily basis, comprised of 5 AIX servers, and sometimes I need to issue a same command on all 5 of them.
So I set up SSH key-based authentication between the servers, and whipped up a little ksh script that broadcasts the command to all of them:
#!/usr/bin/ksh
if [[ $# -eq 0 ]]; then
print "broadcast.ksh - broadcasts a command to the 5 XXXXXXXX environments and returns output for each"
print "usage: ./broadcast.ksh command_to_issue"
exit
fi
set -A CUST_HOSTS aaa bbb ccc ddd eee
for host in ${CUST_HOSTS[#]}; do
echo "============ $host ================"
if [[ `uname -n` = $host ]]; then
$*
continue
fi
ssh $host $*
done
echo "========================================="
echo "Finished"
Now, this works just fine, until I want to use a wildcard on the remote end, something like:
./broadcast.ksh ls -l java*
since the '*' is expanded on the local system as opposed to the remote.
Now, if using ssh remote commands, I can get around this by using single quotes:
ssh user#host ls -l java* <-- will _not_ work as expected, since asterisk will be interpreted locally
ssh user#host 'ls -l java*' <-- _will_ work as expected, since asterisk will be interpreted on the remote end
Now, I have tried to incorporate that into my script, and have tried to create a $command variable made up of the $* contents surrounded by single quotes, but have drowned in a sea of escaping backslashes and concatenation attempts in ksh, to no avail.
I'm sure there's a simple solution to this, but I'm not finding it so thought I would come out and ask.
Thanks,
James

Answer 1

As you found, passing an asterisk as an argument to your script doesn't work because the shell expands it before the arguments are processed. Try double-quoting $* and either escaping asterisks/semi-colons etc with backslashes in your script call, or single quoting the command.
for host in ${CUST_HOSTS[#]}; do
echo "============ $host ================"
if [[ `uname -n` = $host ]]; then
"$*"
continue
fi
ssh $host "$*"
done
$ ./broadcast.ksh ls -l java\*
$ ./broadcast.ksh 'ls -l java*; ls -l *log'

Answer 2

I wanted to comment but still too low on the totum, but Josh's single quote suggestion should work.
I spun up a couple of vms each with 2 files in /tmp : /tmp/foo1 and /tmp/foo2
then used a variation of your script
root#jdsdrop1:~# cat foo.sh
#!/usr/bin/ksh
if [[ $# -eq 0 ]]; then
print "broadcast.ksh - broadcasts a command to the 5 XXXXXXXX environments and returns output for each"
print "usage: ./broadcast.ksh command_to_issue"
exit
fi
set -A CUST_HOSTS jdsdropfed1 jdsdropfed2-2
for host in ${CUST_HOSTS[#]}; do
echo "============ $host ================"
if [[ `uname -n` = $host ]]; then
$*
continue
fi
ssh $host $*
done
echo "========================================="
echo "Finished"
root#jdsdrop1:~# ./foo.sh 'ls /tmp/foo*'
============ jdsdropfed1 ================
/tmp/foo1
/tmp/foo2
============ jdsdropfed2-2 ================
/tmp/foo1
/tmp/foo2
=========================================
Finished
root#jdsdrop1:~# ssh jdsdropfed1 "ls /tmp/foo*"
/tmp/foo1
/tmp/foo2
root#jdsdrop1:~# ssh jdsdropfed2-2. "ls /tmp/foo*"
/tmp/foo1
/tmp/foo2