topic Re: Regular Expression Question in Operating System - HP-UX

Regular Expression Question

Paul Murray_4 — Wed, 20 Aug 2003 09:40:11 GMT

Hi All,

I've got a rather large shell script written in ksh, but I need to make a small modification to pick up a regular expression.

The requirement is to match either wordA or wordB in an "ls" command, but the expression that works in Posix, doesn't seem to work in ksh.

The Posix expression is:-

$ ls -l {FULL,INCR}BACKUP.log

Does anyone know an equiv. for ksh ???

(Thanks in advance for any/all help!!)

Rgds,
Paul.

Re: Regular Expression Question

Pete Randall — Wed, 20 Aug 2003 10:09:47 GMT

Paul,

I'm not known for my shell scripting, so take this with a grain of salt:

How about:

ls -l [FI][UN][LC][LR]BACKUP.log

?

Does that give you what you want?

Pete

Re: Regular Expression Question

Bernhard Mueller — Wed, 20 Aug 2003 10:12:59 GMT

Paul,

why not use grep?

ls -l | grep -e 'BACKUP.log$' -e 'FULL|INCR'

(not *exactly* yours but maybe you like this better:

ls -l *BACKUP.log | grep -e 'FULL|INCR'

or really exact and only:
ls -l | grep -e FULLBACKUP.log -e INCRBACKUP.log

Regards,
Bernhard

Re: Regular Expression Question

Leif Halvarsson_2 — Wed, 20 Aug 2003 10:23:07 GMT

Hi,
Try (in ksh):
ls -l ?(FULL|INC)BACKUP.log

Re: Regular Expression Question

James R. Ferguson — Wed, 20 Aug 2003 10:44:03 GMT

Hi Paul:

Leif's suggestion works.

Here are two other alternatives, too:

(1) Use the standard Posix shell ('/usr/bin/sh'). It is really a superset of the Korn (ksh88) shell as provided with HP-UX.

(2) Instead of the 1988 version of Korn, use the 1993 version. You should find it as '/usr/dt/bin/dtksh'.

Regards!

...JRF...

Re: Regular Expression Question

Jean-Luc Oudart — Wed, 20 Aug 2003 10:47:41 GMT

call the posix shell for this part only :

....
/usr/bin/sh "ls -l {FULL,INCR}BACKUP.log"
....

Rgds,
JL

Re: Regular Expression Question

Paul Murray_4 — Wed, 20 Aug 2003 10:50:26 GMT

Thanks to all for your help (points have been awarded !!).

Leif's answer has provided exactly what I needed - many thanks !!!