UNIX 'ls' command - wildcard 'OR' operator

string shell unix wildcard ls
Nossidge picture Nossidge · Jun 22, 2012 · Viewed 15.7k times · Source

I have a directory with timestamped files in the format:

processAlpha20120618.txt
processAlpha20120619.txt
processAlpha20120620.txt
processBeta20120618.txt
processBeta20120619.txt
processBeta20120620.txt
... etc.

I want a list of these for specific dates. Something like this:

ls -l *201206[19|20|21]*

Obviously the above doesn't work, but you can see what I was trying to achieve. I want to match anything where the string "201206" is followed by either "19", "20" or "21".

I know that this is possible using grep or find, I just wondered if it could be done using ls.

Answer

Andrew Stubbs picture Andrew Stubbs · Jun 22, 2012

Providing you're wanting to match exact dates (which it appears you are), the way to so with bash expansion is: 

ls -l *201206{19,20,21}*

Related questions

Shell script - remove first and last quote (") from a variable

Below is the snippet of a shell script from a larger script. It removes the quotes from the string that is held by a variable. I am doing it using sed, but is it efficient? If not, then what is …

Read More
How to check if a string contains a substring in Bash

I have a string in Bash: string="My string" How can I test if it contains another string? if [ $string ?? 'foo' ]; then echo "It's there!" fi Where ?? is my unknown operator. Do I use echo and grep? if echo "$string" | …

Read More
Extract substring in Bash

Given a filename in the form someletters_12345_moreleters.ext, I want to extract the 5 digits and put them into a variable. So to emphasize the point, I have a filename with x number of characters then a five digit sequence …

Read More