Match optional character in filename expansion with find

[gvim]

In the `find' command how do I match an optional end character, eg. match all files ending in 'html' or 'htm'?

find . -name '*.ht{m,ml}' -print

... doesn't work. Perl regexes have ? so what's the equivalent using `find'.

gvim
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[Robert McKay]

Post by gvim
In the `find' command how do I match an optional end character, eg. match
all files ending in 'html' or 'htm'?
find . -name '*.ht{m,ml}' -print
... doesn't work. Perl regexes have ? so what's the equivalent using `find'.

I'm not sure if there's a better answer but find does support using
multiple -name parameters that can be -and'd or -or'd together. So you
could simply do;

find . -name '*.htm' -o -name '*.html' -print

Rob
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[Sunny Aujla]

Post by gvim
In the `find' command how do I match an optional end character, eg. match
all files ending in 'html' or 'htm'?
find . -name '*.ht{m,ml}' -print

This is how I would do it:

find /path/to/dir -type f \(-name "*.html" -o -name "*.htm" \)

Quick and Easy!

Sunny
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[John Edwards]

Post by gvim
In the `find' command how do I match an optional end character, eg. match all files ending in 'html' or 'htm'?
find . -name '*.ht{m,ml}' -print
... doesn't work. Perl regexes have ? so what's the equivalent using `find'.

GNU find has a '-regex' option, but the man page says it only
supports Emacs regular expressions and not Perl compatible ones.

[Stuart Sears]

Post by John Edwards

Post by gvim
In the `find' command how do I match an optional end character, eg.
match all files ending in 'html' or 'htm'?
find . -name '*.ht{m,ml}' -print
... doesn't work. Perl regexes have ? so what's the equivalent using `find'.

GNU find has a '-regex' option, but the man page says it only
supports Emacs regular expressions and not Perl compatible ones.

You can specify the regex type you'd like to use - there are a number of
choices (at least on my version of findutils)

man find:
-regextype type
Changes the regular expression syntax understood by -regex and
-iregex tests which occur later on the command line. Currently-
implemented types are emacs (this is the default), posix-awk,
posix-basic, posix-egrep and posix-extended.


so something like this:

find . -type f -regextype posix-extended -iregex '.*\.html?'

but in this case even the standard 'emacs' regex class works the way you
want

find . -type f -regex '.*\.html?'

should probably do what you're after

n.b. these examples all from
find (GNU findutils) 4.5.10

Stuart

[Nix]

Post by Stuart Sears
You can specify the regex type you'd like to use - there are a number of
choices (at least on my version of findutils)
-regextype type
Changes the regular expression syntax understood by -regex and
-iregex tests which occur later on the command line. Currently-
implemented types are emacs (this is the default), posix-awk,
posix-basic, posix-egrep and posix-extended.

[...]

Post by Stuart Sears
n.b. these examples all from
find (GNU findutils) 4.5.10

The -regextype option was introduced in findutils 4.2.24: before that
release, GNU locate's --regex option used POSIX BREs and GNU find
generally used Emacs-compatible regexes except when the maintainer
forgot for a release or two :) (This behaviour was somewhat suboptimal,
hence the addition of tests and -regextype to make it hard to get it
wrong again.)