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Linux Globbing

Links: 104 Linux Index

File globbing

  • Bash DOES NOT support native regular expressions like some other standard programming languages.
The Bash shell feature that is used for matching or expanding specific types of patterns is called globbing.
  • Globbing is mainly used to match filenames or searching for content in a file.
    • Globbing uses wildcard characters to create the pattern.

Symbols

  • ? - Used to match any one single character.
    • attachments/Pasted image 20221216221229.jpg
  • * - Used to match zero or more characters.
    • A simple * means everything.
    • attachments/Pasted image 20221216221418.jpg
  • [] - Used to match a range for a single character.
    • All uppercase alphabets are defined by the range as [A-Z] .
    • All lowercase alphabets are defined by the range as [a-z].
    • All numeric digits are defined by the range as [0-9].
    • All uppercase and lower alphabets are defined by the range as [a-zA-z].
    • All uppercase alphabets, lowercase alphabet and digits are defined by the range as [a-zA-Z0-9]
    • It is generally used in conjunction with *
      • attachments/Pasted image 20221216221800.jpg
**/*.py will recursively traverse all subdirectories and find all files that end in .py
Apart from linux we can use Python's glob module to recursively look for files in a sub directories.

I can also be used to just list out all the files in subdirectories starting from a root directory.

Last updated: 2022-12-16