Regular Expression Question

[Paul Murray_4]

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.

[Pete Randall]

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

[Bernhard Mueller]

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

[Leif Halvarsson_2 · Accepted solution]

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

[James R. Ferguson]

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...

[Jean-Luc Oudart]

call the posix shell for this part only :

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

Rgds,
JL

[Paul Murray_4]

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

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