Bash globbing files only?

[Cameron Simpson]

On 29Jan2007 18:58, Jacques B. <jjrboucher at gmail.com> wrote:
| >Got an alias for "ls"? Try:
| >  unalias ls
| >  ls -d */
| >
| >The -d says don't treat directories specially (normally ls lists
| >directory _contents_ if a directory is named).
| 
| I do have an alias for ls, but it's simply to add color.  I did the
| unalias and get the same results.  Now with the one you have listed
| here, I do get the directories.  Even when I source my .bashrc back to
| get the alias back, it still works as expected.  So the alias is not
| affecting my ls beyond adding color.
| 
| Is the command $ls [^.]*/
| working as expected for you, listing only directories in your current 
| directory?

Yep, in both zsh and bash. BTW, what is the "[^.]" supposed to achieve?
A plain "*" should act the same, I'd expect.

Try this:

  set -x
  ls [^.]*/
  ls -d [^.]*/
  ls -d */

It would be interesting to see what the differences are, if any.

You could whack a ">/dev/null" onto the end of the ls commands
so the "set -x" tracing is easy to see.

| I'm fairly comfortable with the basics of bash and some intermediate
| bash but I hadn't played with globbing much.  In reading up on it I'm
| left with the impression that the command above would list all files
| not starting with a period ([^.]), then the wildcard * (so could be
| anything at all),

Yes, but plain "*" is supposed to not match things beginning with "."
anyway.

| followed by the / (which doesn't seem to do
| anything).

Yes it does - it forces a path traversal. You can do that with a
directory, but not a file (nothing to transverse "into").

| Even if it did work, would it not exclude any directory starting with
| a period?

Yes. I suspect it's a mistake from people trying to avoid "." and "..".

| But that aside, does it work (or not work) for anyone else?
| 
| I have
| GNU bash, version 3.1.17(1)-release (i686-redhat-linux-gnu)

Me too.
-- 
Cameron Simpson <cs at zip.com.au> DoD#743
http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/

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