hey all
simple question for you guys but i have spent a good while trying to figure it out
i have an assignment question that i am struggling with.
is it possible with a list query to list all the files that begin with two letters, have an e in the name and end with 1 or more letter

what i have so far is
ls [a-z][a-z]*e**[a-z]
this seems to work except if the filename starts with an e its not showing it in the list

Thanks in advance

The program ls is getting its input from you via the shell. The shell uses globbing not regular expressions. See "man 7 glob"

You might take a look at find instead if you really need regular expressions. In particular, take a look at the -regex option. find can deal with more than one type of regular expression dialect.

Welcome to LQ.

Since this is an assignment I would assume that using find is not an option.

If you have not already figured the answer out were you given a list of test file names? If not what were you using?

[...] is a valid glob expression.

thanks for the replies
i wasnt given a list of filenames, i was told to create them to test the command is working.
I believe I can only use the ls command.
I am also trying to figure out how to add queries using ls
for example how to say the filename contains the letter e AND the first 2 characters are letters.
So far it seems this is not working for me.

thanks again

What have you tried and what are your test file names?

Yes.
The bash man page details this under "Pathname Expansion".

What you have so far only considers lower case filenames. Also, you may want to consider the -d option to ls, to avoid recursion into subdirectories.

So, exact question
Create the command that will do the following: List all the files that begin with two letters, have an e in the name and end with 1 or more letter.
I am now trying this
ls [a-z][a-z]*e**[!0-9]

I have created about 10 files. some with no extension and some with .txt
file names = apple cake bake hardest hardest1 apple1 bakes cakes echo
Where I have got to
my command will list the files but echo will not be listed even though it starts with 2 letters and contains an e
also, it doesnt work for the files that have the .txt extensions

Because of the ...*e*... Your pattern will only match filenames where an e exists in then middle which is why echo does not work. I don't know why the .txt extensions do not match without seeing the actual filename.

Not sure what you have learned in class but we are not just going to give you the answer.

Hint:
https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/ma...-Matching.html

All I am looking for is a pointer, i am not expecting the answer. This assignment was after first class. I am wondering if the answer can be achieved with a single ls command ?
What I cant see is how to use an "and" command or if thats even possible as I am struggling to work out how to ask for a file that starts with something, ends with something and also has a specific character somewhere in it....

Did you read the link I posted?

indeed i did. I did one approx 2 hour class in linux so most of this stuff makes absolutely no sense to me "If the extglob shell option is enabled using the shopt builtin"
At this point I am going to quit while I am behind.

thanks for taking the time to reply

Here is one example of extended globbing.

ls ?(e*|*e*)

-

so slightly change the command to help with the explanation

ls ?(e*|*a*) - this command will list all file names that start with an "e" and filenames that have an a anywhere which makes sense.

I have also read through here - http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/...ended-globbing but cannot get the + to work as outlined on that page.

From that page
Also mentioned in the link in post#8
Learn to love the documentation!

another 2 hours spent on trying to figure out that command
I am not at here - ls | grep “^[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z]^.*e.*[a-zA-Z]$”
but that will not display any filenames that have the e as the first or second character.... aaaaaaarrrrrrrggggggghhhhhhhh