How to use grep?

Question

I need to find file from ls - l by using grep and certain regexp.

In particular I need greep to see certain file ending, like let's say .txt but only using regex.

So it should be something like

ls -l | grep '^.+\.txt$'

But that doesn't seem to work for me.

Is there a reason you are not using ls -l *.txt? Also note that with the eoln match ($), this will not pick up symlinks. With extended regexp (as Matt mentions), you might want to use '^.+\.txt\>' $ ls -l *.txt lrwxrwxrwx 1 arcege arcege 8 2011-04-07 09:04 file.txt -> realfile $ ls -l | grep -E '^.+\.txt$' $ ls -l | grep -E '^.+\.txt\>' lrwxrwxrwx 1 arcege arcege 8 2011-04-07 09:04 file.txt -> realfile

Majenko · Answer 1 · 2011-04-07 10:18:23Z

up vote 4 down vote accepted

You need to specify the -E flag for grep:

-E, --extended-regexp
    Interpret  PATTERN  as  an extended regular expression (ERE, see
    below).  (-E is specified by POSIX.)

answered Apr 7 '11 at 10:18

Majenko
15k1235

Hm.. Damn inattentiveness, I tried it but didn't specify the correct path :D – den-javamaniac Apr 7 '11 at 10:21

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