View Source: Globs - Waikato Linux Users Group

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A File [Glob] is a way to match files.

* "*" matches any character.
* "?" matches any character exactly once.
* "~[a-z~]" matches any character in the range a-z.

Some examples:

''~*.*'' matches all files/dirs that contain a "." in them.

''a*'' matches all files/dirs that begin with a

''~[a-z~]*'' matches all files/dirs that begin with a lowercase letter

''~*.gz'' matches all files/dirs that end with .gz

''~[^A-C~]*'' matches all files/dirs that do not begin with A or B or C.

<verbatim>
Note, * and ? __don't__ match / or a . at the beginning of a filename eg: * doesn't match:

1) .foo
2) baz/nargle

but does match:

1) foo.txt
2) baz/
</verbatim>

!extglob

This is a shell option that can be enabled by doing

*shopt -s extglob

Here are the extra pattern matching operators we can now use thanks to extglob:
<verbatim>
              ?(pattern-list)
                     Matches zero or one occurrence of the given patterns
              *(pattern-list)
                     Matches zero or more occurrences of the given patterns
              +(pattern-list)
                     Matches one or more occurrences of the given patterns
              @(pattern-list)
                     Matches one of the given patterns
              !(pattern-list)
                     Matches anything except one of the given patterns

pattern-list is just a bunch of globs separated by the | character.
</verbatim>




!extglob Examples

<verbatim>
1) cp !(*.[Jj][Pp][Gg]|*.[Bb][Mm][Pp]) /dest/dir will copy every file to ''/dest/dir'' that is not a jpg or bmp file.

2) ls @(*foo*|*bar*|*car*) will list every file/directory that has either foo, bar or car in its name.

3) mv file+([0-9]) /dest/dir/ will move every file/directory that has a prefix of ''file'' followed by at least one number.
</verbatim>

See glob(7) for more advanced uses.

Contrast RegularExpression.
No page links to Globs.
Last edited on Tuesday, May 1, 2007 6:14:03 pm by BenStaz
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