How to use variables in brace expansion

Question

This works as expected:

$ echo file-{00..03}
file-00 file-01 file-02 file-03

This does not do what I wanted:

$ start=00
$ end=03
$ echo file-{$start..$end}
file-{00..03}

The reason is that brace expansion is performed before any other epansion.

In my case, the sequence limits are in the variables start and end .

Any clever way to hack my way around this?

Answer 1

I have this:

$ eval echo file-{$start..$end}
file-00 file-01 file-02 file-03

But I am open to less ugly suggestions.