This is an example of a wildcard, using the [0-9] and [A-Z] wildcards to look for numbers and capital letters.
deusexmachina:Documents jason$ ls -hula [A-Z]rma[0-9]* -rwxr-xr-x 1 jason staff 1.7G 5 Mar 20:14 Arma3_x64_2017_11_13_21_50_20_373.avi -rwxrwxrwx 1 jason staff 1.2G 28 Jun 14:04 Arma3_x64_2018_01_04_15_29_53_844.avi -rwxrwxrwx 1 jason staff 1.0G 4 Jan 16:13 Arma3_x64_2018_01_04_15_32_03_159.avi -rwxrwxrwx 1 jason staff 2.9G 27 Mar 14:30 Arma3_x64_2018_01_04_15_34_52_367.avi |
This wildcard example will find all filenames that start with a number.
deusexmachina:Documents jason$ ls -ulha [0-9]* -rw-r--r--@ 1 jason staff 163K 20 Feb 12:57 1514877771595.jpg -rw-r--r--@ 1 jason staff 51K 18 Jun 11:10 93bffab7a44bc518799a2a68711ad790.jpg |
Find all filenames with the current year in the filename.
deusexmachina:Pictures jason$ ls | grep $(eval date +%Y)* vlcsnap-2018-02-04-22h34m33s886.png vlcsnap-2018-02-04-22h35m14s143.png |
Another example, this is more complex.
deusexmachina:Pictures jason$ ls | grep [a-z]-$(eval date +%Y)-[0-9]* vlcsnap-2018-02-04-22h34m33s886.png vlcsnap-2018-02-04-22h35m14s143.png |
Using $(eval date +%Y) instead of `date +%Y` is the proper way to run a command within a one-liner like this.
Listing all files that start with letters and end with a number in the filename.
deusexmachina:Desktop Pictures jason$ ls | grep "[a-z] [0-9]" Color Burst 1.jpg Color Burst 2.jpg Color Burst 3.jpg El Capitan 2.jpg Sierra 2.jpg Yosemite 2.jpg Yosemite 3.jpg Yosemite 4.jpg Yosemite 5.jpg |
Listing all filenames that start with the letters E to F.
deusexmachina:Desktop Pictures jason$ ls -hula [E-F]* -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 4.2M 2 Jan 12:19 Earth Horizon.jpg -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 3.8M 2 Jan 12:19 Earth and Moon.jpg -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 11M 2 Jan 12:19 El Capitan 2.jpg -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 12M 2 Jan 12:19 El Capitan.jpg -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 8.4M 2 Jan 12:18 Elephant.jpg -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 7.8M 2 Jan 12:19 Floating Ice.jpg -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 4.2M 2 Jan 12:19 Foggy Forest.jpg -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 7.7M 2 Jan 12:18 Foxtail Barley.jpg |
That shows how easy the [E-F] range in square brackets is to use in bash. This can be very useful on a Linux or UNIX machine.