Interpreting regular expressions using find in Linux confusion

Posted by PeanutsMonkey on Super User See other posts from Super User or by PeanutsMonkey
Published on 2012-09-10T03:33:51Z Indexed on 2012/09/10 3:40 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 532

Filed under:
|

I am attempting to use the find command and came across an article at http://www.linux.ie/newusers/beginners-linux-guide/find.php which states The wildcard character is escaped with a slash so BASH sends a literal asterisk to the find utility as an argument instead of performing filename expansion and passing any number of files in as arguments. for the command find . -name up\*.

Being new to the world of Linux I don't quite understand how the use of a backslash which is meant to escape the meta character * is interpreted and returns results as though as it is being passed to find. Does it mean if I use the -name option I have to use a backslash to pass a wildcard and if I don't use -name I don't have to use a backslash?

© Super User or respective owner

Related posts about linux

Related posts about find