Can you explain why it shows myfile twice in the last command?

[Avinash Agarkar]

test:cd /tmp

test:/tmp > mkdir test

testp > cd test

test:/tmp/test > touch .myfile

test:/tmp/test > ls -al
total 464
drwxr-x--- 2 lsapas6 lsapuser 512 24 Jun 06:44 .
drwxrwxrwt 44 bin bin 230912 24 Jun 06:44 ..
-rw-r----- 1 lsapas6 lsapuser 0 24 Jun 06:44 .myfile

test:/tmp/test > ls -l .* | grep myfile
-rw-r----- 1 lsapas6 lsapuser 0 24 Jun 06:44 .myfile

test:/tmp/test > ls -al .* | grep myfile
-rw-r----- 1 lsapas6 lsapuser 0 24 Jun 06:44 .myfile
-rw-r----- 1 lsapas6 lsapuser 0 24 Jun 06:44 .myfile

Thanks,
Avinash

[OFC_EDM]

I think it's because it's listing the file ".myfile" and then listing the contents of "."

[OFC_EDM]

clicked submit by accident.

To continue my post.

"." is the current directory. So when it lists the contents of the current directory it will disply ".myfile" again when using ls -al .*

Cheers

[Torsten.]

Try this:

test:/tmp/test > ls -al .*

(leave the "grep" away).

You will see that the system is doing the following:

# ls -al
# ls -al .
# ls -al ..

[Kenan Erdey]

hi,

ls -al .[a-z]* |grep myfile works. is it possible to escape "." in .* ?

[Rasheed Tamton]

ls -a|grep ^.m
ll |grep \\.m


Regards,
Rasheed Tamton.

[Rasheed Tamton]

With awk:

ll|awk '{print $9}'|grep ^\\.

[Laurent Menase]

To avoid that type of thing use
ls -al .[[:alnum:]]*

[Dennis Handly]

>Kenan: ls -al .[a-z]* | grep myfile works. is it possible to escape "." in .*?

No need to escape "." in the Pattern Matching Notation that the shell uses. There "?" is the any char, character. You would have to escape it in grep's Basic Regular Expression.

[Torsten.]

Because of the "*" the shell will substitute the "*" and your "ls" command will run recursively as mentioned above.

this is the reason why you see the file twice.

It is a result of

# ls -al
followed by
# ls -al .

Both commands find the file.

[Trupti Mahadik]

It is very obvious to show .myfile twice for ur command.
Explanation as follows:

1)Ur command ls -al .* | grep myfile
Shell is executing command in following way.

ls - list
l - long list
a - hidden files

now ls -al .* will show all hidden files as well as hidden directories from current working directory.

1) So as per execution of command,shell will find â .â Directory (i.e. Current directory - /tmp/test)
U have issued log listing, so it will show files & directory tree inside â .â means current directory /tmp/test. There again u have greped for .myfile, so it will show u .myfile.

So thatâ s ur first o/p â -rw-r----- 1 lsapas6 lsapuser 0 24 Jun 06:44 .myfileâ

2) Now shell will go to next directory i.e. â ..â (Parent directory-/tmp in ur case)
But there is no .myfile in /tmp.

So, It will go to next dir or file.
In case of dir it will search for .myfile & goes to next dir/file
In case of file it will matches it with .myfile,it equals to .myfile,it will return result as

So thatâ s ur second o/p â -rw-r----- 1 lsapas6 lsapuser 0 24 Jun 06:44 .myfileâ

So this is the reason why it is showing .myfile twice as in Present working directory & â .â means Current working directory.
And Present working directory & Current working directory is same i.e.
/tmp/test

[Peter Nikitka]

Hi,

the simpiliest way to overcome this IMHO:

ls -ld .* | ...
ls -ald .* | ... (but this won't tell anything different)

mfG Peter