[plug] hidden files

Richard Meyer meyerri at au1.ibm.com
Wed Aug 20 10:59:18 WST 2003






----- Forwarded by Richard Meyer/Australia/Contr/IBM on 20/08/2003 10:51 AM
-----
                                                                                                                                    
                      Ben New                                                                                                       
                      <ben at leftclick.co        To:       plug at plug.linux.org.au                                                     
                      m.au>                    cc:                                                                                  
                                               Subject:  Re: [plug] hidden files                                                    
                      20/08/2003 10:42                                                                                              
                      AM                                                                                                            
                      Please respond to                                                                                             
                      plug                                                                                                          
                                                                                                                                    
                                                                                                                                    





>Richard Meyer wrote:

>>find / -name .* -print
>>
>>This will scan the whole directory structure for everything whose name
>>starts with a ".", and print the result.
>>
>>

>Sorry Richard, that won't work for 2 reasons-

>1. the shell will expand the * before it executes find, making the
>params for find incorrect, and
>2. even if you quoted or escaped the ".*", the find will also find the
>"." and ".." entries of each directory, which happen to start with a
>".", thereby finding every directory in the system.

Hmm, I've used expressions of the form "-name fred*" before, but maybe
there is a problem with ".*". I don't have a Linux box around to check. As
for no 2 the user can easily ignore . and ..  -  quick and dirty is the way
to go - a quick run through sort and the lines could be deleted easily ;)

>You might have to play around with the -regex option or something. (This
>is assuming that you meant "files with names that start with a dot" when
>you say "hidden files")

Well I was assuming that's what Jon meant, since it is a Linux list, and it
appears I get 10/10 for ESP, even if I left out the quotes, so after
subtracting 5 points for that, I still get 50%.  :)

Thanks for the correction
RichardM

>Regards,
>Ben







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