On Wed, Dec 28, 2011 at 04:31, aleksandergajewski <
aleksandergajew...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi, i've just come across vim startstar symbol - here's note from vim
> help:
>
> << CUT HERE >>
> The usage of '*' is quite simple: It matches 0 or more characters.
> In a
> search pattern this would be ".*". Note that the "." is not used
> for file
> searching.
>
> '**' is more sophisticated:
> - It ONLY matches directories.
> - It matches up to 30 directories deep by default, so you can
> use it to
> search an entire directory tree
> - The maximum number of levels matched can be given by appending
> a number
> to '**'.
> Thus '/usr/**2' can match: >
> /usr
> /usr/include
> /usr/include/sys
> /usr/include/g++
> /usr/lib
> /usr/lib/X11
> ....
> < It does NOT match '/usr/include/g++/std' as this would be
> three
> levels.
> The allowed number range is 0 ('**0' is removed) to 100
> If the given number is smaller than 0 it defaults to 30, if
> it's
> bigger than 100 th<< CUT HERE >>en 100 is used. The system
> also has a limit on the
> path length, usually 256 or 1024 bytes.
> - '**' can only be at the end of the path or be followed by a
> path
> separator or by a number and a path separator.
> << CUT HERE >>
>
> Every time I wanted to use recursive search in bash, i wrote simple
> script, or did manually (eg. ls */*.txt; ls */*/*.txt etc.), then I
> found 'find + xargs', but in fact '**' would be sufficient for my
> needs (and it seems to be more useful in most cases)
>
> Here is my question: why there is no such thing in bash? Is there any
> compatibility issue, which makes it difficult/impossible to introduce
> in bash?
>
Bash 4.0 added a new shopt option `globstar'. ... When enabled, the
globbing code treats `**' specially -- it matches all directories (and
files within them, when appropriate) recursively.
Is that what you want?
