POSIX regular expressions can be used to match files for inclusion or exclusion of files from file sets or searches.
They are much like the wildcard characters in Windows, but much more flexible and powerful.
The standard Windows wildcard matchers use two wildcards: * matches any number of any characters, and ? matches any character. For example, ?.doc returns a.doc, but not file.doc; *.doc matches both.
POSIX regular expressions have more options. These are some of the special characters used in POSIX regular expressions:
| Character | Description |
|---|---|
. | Matches a single character |
[] | Match characters specified within square brackets |
[^] | Match any characters, not specified within square brackets |
\ | Escape character. Toggles special meaning of the following character. To get a literal backslash (\), enter \\ (the first backslash makes the second one not to be a special character anymore). |
\d | Matches any number. Shorter variant of [0-9]. |
\D | Matches anything but numbers. Shorter variant of [^0-9]. |
$ | Matches the end of the file name |
^ | Matches the start of the file name |
* | Modifies the preceding character to match zero or more times |
+ | Modifies the preceding character to match once or more times |
? | Modifies the preceding character to match once or more times |
{m} | Modifies the preceding character to match m times, for example, .{3} matches any three characters |
{m,} | Modifies the preceding character to match m or more times, for example, .{3,} matches three or more characters |
{m,n} | Modifies the preceding character to match from m to n times, for example, .{3,4} matches any 3 or 4 characters |
Regular expressions will match a file if the expression matches any part of the file name. So, a regular expression g will match any file with the letter g anywhere in the file name. $ matches the end of the file name (including the extension), so g$ will match any file name ending in g, for example, .mpg, .png and .jpg files.
Assume you have the following files: a.doc, a.dooc, a.dc, a.dac, and aldoc.
Regular expression a\.d.c matches both a.doc and a.dac. Backslash (\) makes period (.) between a and d match period (.) specifically, not any character.
Regular expression a.d.c matches a.doc, a.dac, and aldoc.
Wrapping characters in square brackets matches a single character to anything in the set. This means that regular expression d[abcde]c matches a.dac, but not a.doc (because o is not listed). [] can also contain a range of characters, so the same regular expression can be written as d[a-e]c, which is easier to write. Square brackets can also be used to match anything not in a list. So d[^f-z]c matches a.dac, but not a.doc since o is between f and z.
* modifies the preceding character to match zero or more times. So, regular expression do*c matches a.dc, a.doc, and a.dooc. * can also modify square brackets. Regular expression d[a-e]*c also matches a.dc, a.doc, and a.dooc.
+ modifies the preceding character match same as * does, except it requires at least one match. So, regular expression do+c matches a.doc and a.dooc, but not a.dc.
{} modifier sets a fixed number or range of matches. For example, .do{2}c matches a.dooc. You can also specify a range, for example, regular expression a\.do{0,1}c matches a.dc, and a.doc, but not a.dooc.
Appliance uses slash (/) to separate directories even in Windows where directories are separated with backslash (\).
Below are a few examples of the regular Windows character matching using wildcards, and their equivalent regular expressions.
| Windows wildcard | POSIX regular expression | Explanation |
|---|---|---|
*z*.*, *.*z* | z | Matches any file with z in its file name or extension |
*.com | \.com$ | Matches all files with .com extension |
*.?om | ..om$ | Matches all files with .aom, .bom, .com, and the like extensions |
*.aom, *.bom, *.zom | .[abz]om$ | Matches all files with .aom, .bom, and .zom extensions in C:\Windows |
a*.*, b*.*, c*.*, d*.*, e*.*, f*.*, g*.*, h*.*, i*.*, j*.* | ^[a-j] | Matches all files and directories starting with letters from a to j |
| N/A | ^[0-9]*\.doc$ | Matches all files with .doc extension with file names that are only numbers |
| N/A | ^[0-9].*\.doc$ | Matches all files with .doc extension with file names starting with a number |
| N/A | ^[0-9]{6}\.doc$ | Matches all files with .doc extension with file names of 6 characters long with only numbers in them |
This is just the very basics of POSIX regular expressions that are very powerful and have many more various options.