using bash find command to list *.h and *.cpp

wgillett · 12-14-2005, 08:15 PM

I can do this to get all the .h files in the current dir and subdirs:

find . -name *.h

and can get all the .cpp files as a minor variation. But how do I get .h *and* .cpp files with a single "find" call? First I figured out that I need to do this:

shopt -s extglob

to turn on fancier pattern matching. That allows operators like this:

+(pattern-list)
Matches one or more occurrences of the given patterns

I am able to use this technique with "ls":

ls *+(h|cpp)

to get *.h and *.cpp.

But how to do this with "find"? This:

find . -name '*+(cpp|h)'

doesn't work.

-Walter Gillett

homey · 12-14-2005, 08:22 PM

Try this

Code:

find /some/directory -type f \( -name '*.h' -o -name '*.cpp' \) -exec ls {} \;

Matir · 12-14-2005, 09:46 PM

As a further note, find is NOT a bash builtin, and will so be unable to make use of those extended shell options. /bin/ls would be equally unable to do so, but the bash builtin ls can use it.

Tiny little tricks that will catch you.

wgillett · 12-15-2005, 11:55 AM

Thanks for the example, works great, thanks also for the info on shell options!

-Walter