topic Re: Problem with wilcards in Operating System - HP-UX

Problem with wilcards

R.O. — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 07:24:01 GMT

Hi,

I am trying to mach files named like this:

file1.200705152407

where the digits 200705 are day, month and year.
I want to list all the files that matches the pattern:

file1.(any day)MMYY(any five numbers)

How can I do it? I tried with *, ?, but i does not work.

Regards,

Re: Problem with wilcards

R.O. — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 07:25:46 GMT

Sorry:

file1.(any day)MMYY(any SIX numbers)

Regards,

Re: Problem with wilcards

Simon Hargrave — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 07:36:07 GMT

Why does ? not work? I tested it with some test files: -

# ls -1
file1.010203123451
file1.020203123441
file1.020203123451
file1.020303123451
# ls file1.??0203??????
file1.010203123451
file1.020203123441
file1.020203123451

This displays all the files from 0203. Is this not what you want?

Re: Problem with wilcards

A. Clay Stephenson — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 07:43:14 GMT

You can use "[0-9]" to represent any single digit; multiple "[0-9]"'s can be strung together.

Often it's actually easier to simply punt and do an ls (of everything, or ls file1*) and pipe to enhanced grep for more serious regular expression evaluation:

ls | grep -E -e '^file1\.[0-9]{12}$'

which would list file1.followed by exactly 12 digits which seems to be a simpler statement of your problem.

Re: Problem with wilcards

Sandman! — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 08:58:26 GMT

Clay is correct. You can use the wildcard "*" character to specify the preceding range of character(s) you want to match. The following command will list all the files:

# ls -1 file1.[0-9]*

cheers!

Re: Problem with wilcards

R.O. — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 00:59:58 GMT

Hi,

Thank you for your responses!!! It happens in a script. If I put in the script:

file1.*${MONTH}${YEAR}*

... it works; but if I put

file1.??${MONTH}${YEAR}??????

....it does not works:

file1.??0605?????? not found

What is wrong?

Regards,

Re: Problem with wilcards

V. Nyga — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 01:50:04 GMT

Hi,

you said:
file1.(any day)MMYY(any five numbers)

but you made six '?' at the end:
file1.??${MONTH}${YEAR}??????

That can't work!
You have to make exactly as much '?' as numbers you search.
So with 5 '?' it should work.

HTH
Volkmar

Re: Problem with wilcards

V. Nyga — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 01:57:33 GMT

Sorry - you corrected your number in your first answer.

Can you show us your list command?

V.

Re: Problem with wilcards

Muthukumar_5 — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 03:33:17 GMT

IF your file is like,

file1.200705 then,

#!/bin/ksh
#list.ksh

# User Input
Month="" # two digit example 09
Year="" # two digit 05
LS=`which ls`
$LS file1.??${Month}${Year}?????

exit 0
# end

chmod 755 list.ksh
./list.ksh

hth.

Re: Problem with wilcards

Muthukumar_5 — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 03:40:26 GMT

To elloborate more on this,

ls command will use ? * as pattern matching not with regular expression.

ls file1.??<2digit><2digit>??????

It will try to find files with pattern match of file1.two digits <2 digits><2 digits> <6 digits> else it will try to match for,

ls file1.??0205??????? named file which is created as touch file1.??0205??????

hth.

Re: Problem with wilcards

Sandman! — Sat, 23 Jul 2005 07:43:35 GMT

That's because within the shell the "*" wildcard is treated as a metacharacter but not the "?". Either of the following two commands should list all your files:

# ls -1 file1.*${MONTH}${YEAR}*

OR

# ls -1 | grep -E file1.??${MONTH}${YEAR}??????

cheers!

Re: Problem with wilcards

Michael Schulte zur Sur — Sat, 23 Jul 2005 09:42:14 GMT

Hi,

I don't understand why your approach should not work. I tried it and it worked.
Can you give us more details about which shell you use and what you do with the pattern in the script?

greetings,

Michael