Using wildcards in bash if statement

Question

I wrote the following code in the bash shell. It's supposed to take the positional parameter, and if it starts with a dash "-", it's supposed to input an error message.

But for some reason, the if statement always gets skipped. It only functions if I literally input -*

I get the impression that the fix has something to do with the "$".

Here is a snippet of the code:

    EXECNAME=$1
    if [ "$EXECNAME" = "-*" ]; then
           echo "error: invalid executable name"
    fi

Solution

You can use double square brackets [[ and ]] without use of quotes on matching pattern for glob support in BASH:

[[ "$EXECNAME" = -* ]] && echo "error: invalid executable name"