Bash Extended Globbing

There's one thing that always annoyed me about globbing: How can I match *all* files in a directory? Not just regular files but hidden dotfiles as well, but obviously not the special . and .. directories.

It often happens that I want to move/copy all files from one directory to another but then it leave behind .htaccess files and the like.

I always just say * .??* to mean all files.

Of course the ?? after the dot is to keep it from matching . and ..

But that fails to match dotfiles with less than three characters.

I use ".[0-9A-Za-z]*" to match the hidden files and directories. In my $HOME, I have none with strange symbols after the first dot, so that pattern matches well enough for me.

> But that fails to match dotfiles with less than three characters.

Did I make a typo? In that case, use .?

> Did I make a typo? In that case, use .?

But .? should match ..

Quoting:I use ".[0-9A-Za-z]*" to match the hidden files and directories.

What if I drop a file called ".?ó??"? :) I usually use this one: .[^.]*

Argh. There are supposed to be funny characters in my example filename, not question marks. Who wrote this forum software?? ;P

Ha! I just found the 'dotglob' option. run "shopt -s dotglob" and now * will match dotfiles but not . and ..

> Ha! I just found the 'dotglob' option. run "shopt -s dotglob" and now * will match dotfiles but not . and ..

Very good to know - and it just goes to show you, no matter how long you stay in this game, there is always something new to learn.

Dot-question and dot-dot are dangerous, because they will take you up instead of down.

@jezuch:

The forum began mis-behaving after the blackout recovery.

> Dot-question and dot-dot are dangerous, because they will take you up instead of down.

Yep, that's why we say .?? to avoid matching . or ..

Quoting:Yep, that's why we say .?? to avoid matching . or ..

Or .a or .b or... ;)