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Why regex pattern doesn't work in find?

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# 1  
Old 04-04-2013
Why regex pattern doesn't work in find?
Code:
[rootie@typo1 ~]$ find /opt/data_* -maxdepth 3 -type d -name "main*" 2> /dev/null
/opt/data_025/maindblogs
/opt/data_026/maindblogs
/opt/data_027/maindblogs
/opt/data_028/maindblogs
[rootie@typo1 ~]$ find /opt/data_* -maxdepth 3 -type d -name "rvlogs*" 2> /dev/null
/opt/data_002/prod/rvlogs2_archive
/opt/data_003/prod/rvlogs2_archive
/opt/data_025/rvlogs2_archive
/opt/data_026/rvlogs2_archive
/opt/data_027/rvlogs2_archive
/opt/data_028/rvlogs2_archive
[rootie@typo1 ~]$ find /opt/data_* -maxdepth 3 -type d -regex "\(rvlogs.*\|main.*\)" 2> /dev/null
[rootie@typo1 ~]$

OS:RHEL5.3 shell:bash
# 2  
Old 04-04-2013
This baffled me at first too, so I checked the source:

Code:
       -regex pattern
              File  name  matches regular expression pattern.  This is a match
              on the whole path, not a search.  For example, to match  a  file
              named `./fubar3', you can use the regular expression `.*bar.' or
              `.*b.*3', but not `f.*r3'.  The regular  expressions  understood
              by  find  are by default Emacs Regular Expressions, but this can
              be changed with the -regextype option.

I can see that this'd be inconvenient sometimes... I don't know why they did that.

You can specify multiple -file types instead, like:

Code:
'(' -name 'rvlogs*' -o -name 'main*' ')'

# 3  
Old 04-04-2013
As i understood this should do the trick
Code:
find /opt/data_* -maxdepth 3 -type d -regex \(.*rvlogs.*\|.*main.*\) 2> /dev/null

But it didn't.
# 4  
Old 04-04-2013
You forgot to quote it, so the shell ate all your backslashes, turning it into (.*rvlogs.*|.*main.*)

I wouldn't trust the -regex option though, if it considers the entire path, because how do you know you're matching 'main' in the folder name itself and not something like /opt/data_main/folder_you_do_not_want ? I'd stick with -name.
This User Gave Thanks to Corona688 For This Post:
urello
# 5  
Old 04-04-2013
It works. Thanks alot.
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