Re: Bash extended glob - Negation

[Chet Ramey]

On 4/30/21 2:58 AM, Inian Vasanth wrote:

> Bash Version: 5.1
> Patch Level: 4
> Release Status: release
>
> Description:
>
> A wildcard expression after a negate extglob construct is not returning
> right results.
>
> Steps
>
> Consider the following files and assume, that I want to exclude files
> ending with 8
>
> shopt -s extglob
> touch atop_20210330 atop_20210427 atop_20210428
> ls -1 atop_20210@(3|4)+([0-4])!(8)
> atop_20210330
> atop_20210427
>
> But when I add an extra * at the end of the expression like
>
> ls -1 atop_20210@(3|4)+([0-4])!(8)*
> atop_20210330
> atop_20210427
> atop_20210428
>
> Why is it the case? Shouldn't the glob expression just serve the !(8)
> pattern to exclude and simply do a no-op for the extra * character?

Don't assume the !(8) has to match one character; it can match zero.
If you want to make sure to match filenames ending in something other
than 8, use an operator like [!8] that will match one character.

--
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
                 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU    chet@case.edu    http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/