Question about a Linux command line tool
 

Hi

I used to see one of my colleagues uses a very cool command line tool which uses ** to represent any number of folder hierarchy.

For example:
If there is a file MyFile.java somewhere in:
~/devel/project/component/src/server/com/mycompany/MyFile.java

The tool can simply list the file by using:
ls -l **/MyFile.java

Can anyone let me know what this tool is?

Many thanks
Kevin

I am not familiar with a tool that uses ** like that - but find would get the job done

It's bash's "globstar" option:

There's something worth learning

Although I see that like * it only matches non-hidden directories, so ls -l **/session.rdf won't find session.rdf in .mozilla/ (nor will ls -la **/session.rdf).

Use shopt -s dotglob to force globs to match hidden files.

Also, whatever globbing pattern follows **/ will be applied to the top-level directory as well as all subdirectories. So you can use **/.[^.]* to list all dotfiles in the tree (with [^.] there to keep it from matching the . and .. directories).