finding regular expression repeated occurances

[Lonny Balderston]

I am trying to list files whose names contain 8 consecutive digits. According to "man 5 regexp", command "ls *[0-9]\{8\}*" should work, but it does not. What is the proper syntax for finding regular expression repeated occurances? Thank you.

[Rodney Hills · Accepted solution]

Filename wildcards aren't the same as regular expressions.

For example a "." is any character in regexp, while "?" is any character in wildcards.

To list files with 8 digits-
ls *[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]*

HTH

-- Rod Hills

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Because the shell does not fully implement regular expressions
to use your example
ls *[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]* would have worked.

Commands like grep -E, sed, and awk fully implement regular expressions and Perl extends RE's to almost ludicrous (albeit useful) levels.