On 4/28/17 8:09 PM, L A Walsh wrote:
>
> I wanted to search for a file that had 'Tokyo' in the basename,
> in all directories below a given point. I had been doing it 'find',
> but thought globstar should work.
> W/globstar set, I looked for:
>
> ls **Tokyo*
> (nothing)
> ls ***Tokyo*
> (nothing)
> ls **Tokyo**Tokyo*
> (nothing)
> ls **/*Tokyo*
> (found multiple matches (including the one I was
> searching for))
>
> A sample file I was searching for:
>
> Library/Tokyo Ravens/[gg]_Tokyo_Ravens_-_01_[398DE7BC].mkv
>
> I.e. had Tokyo in _both_, dir and subfiles,
> Why didn't any of the 1st 3 patterns find anything?
Because the first two search for files containing the string `Tokyo' in the
current directory and the third finds files containing `Tokyo' twice.
> It seemed that I needed a '/' in the pattern for it
> to be processed as a globstar pattern...??
>
> Is that supposed to be a requirement for globstar
> to function? From this (from bash manpage):
Yes. This is what "used as a single pattern" means. When used for
pathname expansion, patterns are individual strings of characters,
and slashes separate patterns. So the `**Tokyo*' is a single pattern,
`***Tokyo*' is a single pattern, and so on, while `**/*Tokyo*' is two
patterns, one of which is `**'. So `**' needs to appear as a pattern
by itself, either as the string `**' or as one of the patterns separated
by slashes, to get the behavior you want.
>
> * Matches any string, including the null string. When the
> globstar shell option is enabled, and * is used in a
> pathname expansion context, two adjacent *s used as a
> single pattern will match all files and zero or more
> directories and subdirectories. If followed by a /, two
> adjacent *s will match only directories and subdirecto-
> ries.
--
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU c...@case.edu http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/~chet/
