linux find regexp

Question

I have a script where I want to find all direct subdirectories that is purely numerical in a folder and copy them to a specified destination. I have issues to get regexp to work with + and * in find. The folder structure in the example is as follows:

0/
1/
2/
3/
3.02asd/
3a/
4/
44/
45/
451/
452/
453/
4531/
4532/
45321/
45322/
45323/
666aa/
66a/
66aaa/
temp27/

I have gotten this to work with the following commands:

find . -type d -maxdepth 1 -name "[0-9]" | while read f
do
    mv $f $TESTPATH
done

find . -type d -maxdepth 1 -name "[0-9][0-9]" | while read f
do
    mv $f $TESTPATH
done

find . -type d -maxdepth 1 -name "[0-9][0-9][0-9]" | while read f
do
    mv $f $TESTPATH
done

find . -type d -maxdepth 1 -name "[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]" | while read f
do
    mv $f $TESTPATH
done

find . -type d -maxdepth 1 -name "[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]" | while read f
do
    mv $f $TESTPATH
done

Not very nice but it works, but this should probably be possible with something like:

find . -type d -maxdepth 1 -name "[0-9]+"

or

find . -type d -maxdepth 1 -name "[0-9][0-9]*"

But it seems that + doesn't work and * is wildcard it seems.

Paul R · Accepted Answer · 2011-12-02 11:52:42Z

8

Use -regex instead of -name, e.g.

find . -maxdepth 1 -type d -regex ".*/[0-9]*"

edited Dec 2, 2011 at 11:52

answered Dec 2, 2011 at 9:39

Paul R

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3 Comments

Daimrod Over a year ago

Becareful, you have to put the -maxdepth 1 option before -type d.

Paul R Over a year ago

@Daimrod: actually I think it works OK either way around - I just tested it to be sure. Performance is probably better if you put the -maxdepth 1 first though.

Daimrod Over a year ago

Yes both works, but I think it's faster and at least you don't have a warning. ;)

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