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shellunixlsmetacharacters

How can I get a long listing of text files containing "foo" followed by two digits?

Using metacharacters, I need to perform a long listing of all files whose name contains the string foo followed by two digits, then followed by .txt. foo**.txt will not work, obviously. I can't figure out how to do it.

Solution

  • Use Valid Shell Globbing with Character Class

    To find your substring anywhere in a filename like bar-foo12-baz.txt, you need a wilcard before and after the match. You can also use a character class in your pattern to match a limited range of characters. For example, in Bash:

    # Explicit character classes.
ls -l *foo[0-9][0-9]*.txt

# POSIX character classes.
ls -l *foo[[:digit:]][[:digit:]]*.txt

    See Also