From: Peter Stephenson <p.stephenson@samsung.com>
To: <zsh-users@zsh.org>
Subject: Re: is there a way to use *.{txt,zip,tbz,dmg} if one or more might be missing?
Date: Mon, 8 Jul 2019 11:44:39 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <1562582679.5037.2.camel@samsung.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAH+w=7a3mZqZzjtnD3kZonx0QnMfAyFGrHxrqmhns9dpmDEUDw@mail.gmail.com>
On Sun, 2019-07-07 at 17:10 -0700, Bart Schaefer wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 7, 2019 at 4:28 PM TJ Luoma <luomat@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Is there a way to do basically the same thing, but tell `mv` "if is at
> > least one file with any of these extensions, then move to ~/dir/" ?
> Use an alternation pattern instead of brace expansion:
>
> mv -vn *.(txt|zip|tbz|dmg) ~/dir/
I'm surprised to see I never added this to the FAQ. It's getting
quite hard to search, though...
pws
diff --git a/Etc/FAQ.yo b/Etc/FAQ.yo
index c4f65e97a..a8d88ec7c 100644
--- a/Etc/FAQ.yo
+++ b/Etc/FAQ.yo
@@ -128,6 +128,7 @@ Chapter 3: How to get various things to work
3.27. What are these `^' and `~' pattern characters, anyway?
3.28. How do I edit the input buffer in $EDITOR?
3.29. Why does `which' output for missing commands go to stdout?
+3.30. Why doesn't the expansion mytt(foo.{tex,aux,pdf}) do what I expect?
Chapter 4: The mysteries of completion
4.1. What is completion?
@@ -1995,6 +1996,44 @@ sect(Why does `which' output for missing commands go to stdout?)
the exit status does reflect the fact the command can't be found.
+sect(Why doesn't the expansion mytt(*.{tex,aux,pdf}) do what I expect?)
+
+ Based on the behaviour of some other shells, you might guess that the
+ following expression:
+ verb(
+ echo *.{tex,aux,pdf}
+ )
+ would be the way to echo any files ending in mytt(.tex), mytt(.aux) or
+ mytt(.pdf) in the current directory. Depending on your settings for
+ matching (see link(2.1)(21), in particular tt(NO_NOMATCH)), you may
+ see something else, in particular an error about (say) mytt(*.aux) if
+ there were no files ending mytt(.aux).
+
+ The reason for this is that the brace expansion isn't actually
+ a form of pattern matching. Instead, the line above is equivalent to
+ verb(
+ echo *.tex *.aux *.pdf
+ )
+ giving you three separate patterns. With the default mytt(NOMATCH)
+ behaviour in effect, any pattern that fails to match is an error.
+
+ However, there em(is) a way of doing exactly what you want, using
+ parentheses instead of braces:
+ verb(
+ echo *.(tex|aux|pdf)
+ )
+ This is now a pattern matching expression, so is considered as a
+ single pattern. Now any file that exists will supress the
+ mytt(NOMATCH) behaviour, but you'll still get all the files that do
+ match.
+
+ This use of parentheses is special to zsh. Modern Bourne-like shells
+ have a syntax like this, too, but with an mytt(@) in front of the
+ parentheses: again, see link(2.1)(21), and search for mytt(@+LPAR()).
+ This is harder for the user to remember but easier for the shell to
+ parse!
+
+
chapter(The mysteries of completion)
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2019-07-08 10:45 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 4+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2019-07-07 23:27 TJ Luoma
2019-07-08 0:10 ` Bart Schaefer
2019-07-08 10:44 ` Peter Stephenson [this message]
2019-07-08 12:14 ` Mikael Magnusson
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=1562582679.5037.2.camel@samsung.com \
--to=p.stephenson@samsung.com \
--cc=zsh-users@zsh.org \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
Code repositories for project(s) associated with this public inbox
https://git.vuxu.org/mirror/zsh/
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).