CODEWITHSUNDEEP
regexbash
user1071840
user1071840

Reputation: 3592

Regex doesnt match the file path in bash

I've spent quite some time trying to figure out why this regex doesn't match files with names like: 

/var/tmp/app.0.attachments 
.... 
/var/tmp/app.11.attachments


sudo rm -rf /var/tmp/app/\.([0-9]{1}|1[0-1]{1})/\.attachments
$: -bash: syntax error near unexpected token `('

I've tried escaping [, ], | and {}

Please help.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 217

Answers (2)

John Kugelman
John Kugelman

Reputation: 361595

Regexes do not work at the shell. Shells do globbing, which is simpler and not as powerful. With the default globbing, the best you can do is something like:

sudo rm -rf /var/tmp/app/app.[0-9]*.attachments

If you enable extended globbing, you can add pipes and grouping to the toolset.

shopt -s extglob
sudo rm -rf /var/tmp/app/app.@([0-9]|1[0-1]).attachments

Note the different syntax. It's not regex, but it's similar. From the bash(1) man page:

If the extglob shell option is enabled using the shopt builtin, several extended pattern matching operators are recognized. In the following description, a pattern-list is a list of one or more patterns separated by a |. Composite patterns may be formed using one or more of the following sub-patterns:

?(pattern-list)
       Matches zero or one occurrence of the given patterns
*(pattern-list)
       Matches zero or more occurrences of the given patterns
+(pattern-list)
       Matches one or more occurrences of the given patterns
@(pattern-list)
       Matches one of the given patterns
!(pattern-list)
       Matches anything except one of the given patterns

Another alternative would be to use find, which can do both globbing and regexes.

sudo find /var/tmp -regex '/var/tmp/app\.\([0-9]\|1[0-1]\)\.attachments' -delete
sudo find /var/tmp -regex '/var/tmp/app\.\([0-9]\|1[0-1]\)\.attachments' -exec rm -rf {} +

Note that it performs a match on the entire path, not just the file name. You also have to escape \(, \), and \|.

Upvotes: 0

joemurphy
joemurphy

Reputation: 606

Try

sudo rm -rf /var/tmp/app.{0..11}.attachments

Upvotes: 3

Related Questions