Apply command to files which names match a regular expression

Question

For example, I want to apply chmod 777 to every file in some directory which name matches some regular expression. Sure I can do stuff like chmod 777 f*, but when it comes to something more complicated, I don't know how to do it. For example, I can't run chmod 777 *a{3,5}.

How can it be done?

Answer 1

You could use find's -regex to find files matching a regular expression and use xargs to chmod the matched files.

$ ls -l
total 320
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 0 2011-10-01 09:38 baaaaaaat
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 0 2011-10-01 09:38 baaat
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 0 2011-10-01 09:38 baat
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 0 2011-10-01 09:38 bat
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 0 2011-10-01 09:38 boo
$ find ./  -regextype posix-egrep -regex '.*a{3,5}.*' -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 0777
$ ls -l
total 320
-rwxrwxrwx 1 user user 0 2011-10-01 09:38 baaaaaaat
-rwxrwxrwx 1 user user 0 2011-10-01 09:38 baaat
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 0 2011-10-01 09:38 baat
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 0 2011-10-01 09:38 bat
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 0 2011-10-01 09:38 boo
$