CLI tip 19: extended globs

The Bash shell provides extglob option for advanced pattern matching of filenames. These will help you apply regexp like quantifiers, provide alternate patterns and negation. From man bash:

Extended glob	Description
`?(pattern-list)`	Matches zero or one occurrence of the given patterns
`*(pattern-list)`	Matches zero or more occurrences of the given patterns
`+(pattern-list)`	Matches one or more occurrences of the given patterns
`@(pattern-list)`	Matches one of the given patterns
`!(pattern-list)`	Matches anything except one of the given patterns

Extended globs are disabled by default. You can use shopt -s extglob and shopt -u extglob to set and unset this option respectively.

Here are some examples (visit globs.sh to get the script used below).

$ source globs.sh
$ ls
100.sh   f1.txt      f4.txt    hi.sh   math.h         report-02.log
42.txt   f2_old.txt  f7.txt    ip.txt  notes.txt      report-04.log
calc.py  f2.txt      hello.py  main.c  report-00.log  report-98.log

# one or more digits followed by '.' and then zero or more characters
$ ls +([0-9]).*
100.sh  42.txt

# same as: ls *.c *.sh
$ ls *.@(c|sh)
100.sh  hi.sh  main.c

# not ending with '.txt'
$ ls !(*.txt)
100.sh   hello.py  main.c  report-00.log  report-04.log
calc.py  hi.sh     math.h  report-02.log  report-98.log

# not ending with '.txt' or '.log'
$ ls *.!(txt|log)
100.sh  calc.py  hello.py  hi.sh  main.c  math.h

Video demo:

info See also my Linux Command Line Computing ebook.