How to use regex with find command

Question

I have some images named with generated uuid1 string  For example 81397018-b84a-11e0-9d2a-001b77dc0bed jpg  I want to find out all these images using  find  command   find   -regex   a-f0-9 -   36    jpg     But it doesn t work  Something wrong with the regex  Could someone help me with this

User · Answer

Try to use single quotes     to avoid shell escaping of your string  Remember that the expression needs to match the whole path  i e  needs to look like    find   -regex      a-f0-9-   jpg    Apart from that  it seems that my find  GNU 4 4 2  only knows basic regular expressions  especially not the  36  syntax  I think you ll have to make do without it

User · Answer

Simple way - you can specify    in the beginning because find matches the whole path     find   -regextype egrep -regex     a-f0-9 -  36   jpg     find version    find --version find  GNU findutils  4 6 0 Copyright  C  2015 Free Software Foundation  Inc  License GPLv3   GNU GPL version 3 or later   lt http   gnu org licenses gpl html gt   This is free software  you are free to change and redistribute it  There is NO WARRANTY  to the extent permitted by law   Written by Eric B  Decker  James Youngman  and Kevin Dalley  Features enabled  D TYPE O NOFOLLOW enabled  LEAF OPTIMISATION  FTS FTS CWDFD  CBO level 2

User · Answer

on Mac OS X  BSD find   Same as accepted answer  the     prefix is needed to match a complete path     find -E   -regex      a-f0-9 -  36  jpg    man find says -E uses extended regex support

User · Answer

The -regex find expression matches the whole name  including the relative path from the current directory  For find   this always starts with     then any directories   Also  these are emacs regular expressions  which have other escaping rules than the usual egrep regular expressions   If these are all directly in the current directory  then   find   -regex      a-f0-9 -   36    jpg    should work   I m not really sure - I can t get the counted repetition to work here   You can switch to egrep expressions by -regextype posix-egrep   find   -regextype posix-egrep -regex      a-f0-9 -  36   jpg     Note that everything said here is for GNU find  I don t know anything about the BSD one which is also the default on Mac

User · Answer

You should use absolute directory path when applying find instruction with regular expression  In your example  the   find   -regex   a-f0-9 -   36    jpg    should be changed into  find   -regex     a-f0-9 -   36    jpg    In most Linux systems  some disciplines in regular expression cannot be recognized by that system  so you have to explicitly point out -regexty like  find   -regextype posix-extended -regex   a-f0-9 -   36    jpg

User · Answer

find   -regextype sed -regex      a-f0-9 -   36    jpg    Note that you need to specify     in the beginning because find matches the whole path   Example   susam nifty   so  find   -name    jpg    foo-111 jpg   test 81397018-b84a-11e0-9d2a-001b77dc0bed jpg   81397018-b84a-11e0-9d2a-001b77dc0bed jpg susam nifty   so   susam nifty   so  find   -regextype sed -regex      a-f0-9 -   36    jpg    test 81397018-b84a-11e0-9d2a-001b77dc0bed jpg   81397018-b84a-11e0-9d2a-001b77dc0bed jpg   My version of find     find --version find  GNU findutils  4 4 2 Copyright  C  2007 Free Software Foundation  Inc  License GPLv3   GNU GPL version 3 or later  lt http   gnu org licenses gpl html gt  This is free software  you are free to change and redistribute it  There is NO WARRANTY  to the extent permitted by law   Written by Eric B  Decker  James Youngman  and Kevin Dalley  Built using GNU gnulib version e5573b1bad88bfabcda181b9e0125fb0c52b7d3b Features enabled  D TYPE O NOFOLLOW enabled  LEAF OPTIMISATION FTS   CBO level 0   susam nifty   so   susam nifty   so  find   -regextype foo -regex      a-f0-9 -   36    jpg  find  Unknown regular expression type  foo   valid types are  findutils-default    awk    egrep    ed    emacs    gnu-awk    grep    posix-awk    posix-basic    posix-egrep    posix-extended    posix-minimal-basic    sed

User · Answer

Judging from other answers  it seems this might be find s fault   However you can do it this way instead   find       grep -P   a-f0-9 -  36   jpg   You might have to tweak the grep a bit and use different options depending on what you want but it works

[regex] How to use regex with find command?

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