Enable the globstar option to recursively match filenames within a specified path. You can use shopt -s globstar and shopt -u globstar to set and unset this option respectively.

First, create some sample files:

$ mkdir test_globstar && cd $_
$ mkdir -p todos projects/{tictactoe,calculator}
$ touch ip.txt .hidden.txt report.log hello.py
$ touch todos/{books,outing}.txt
$ touch projects/tictactoe/game.py projects/calculator/{calc.sh,notes.txt}

Here are some examples:

$ shopt -s globstar

$ ls -1 **/*.txt
ip.txt
projects/calculator/notes.txt
todos/books.txt
todos/outing.txt

$ ls -1 **/*/*.txt
projects/calculator/notes.txt
todos/books.txt
todos/outing.txt

# assumes extglob is enabled
$ ls -1 **/*.@(py|sh)
hello.py
projects/calculator/calc.sh
projects/tictactoe/game.py

$ ls -1d **/
projects/
projects/calculator/
projects/tictactoe/
todos/

info If you need to match hidden files as well, enable the dotglob option:

$ shopt -s dotglob
$ ls -1 **/*.txt
.hidden.txt
ip.txt
projects/calculator/notes.txt
todos/books.txt
todos/outing.txt

Video demo:


info See also my Linux Command Line Computing ebook.