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Top Forums UNIX for Beginners Questions & Answers SHELL: UNIX : Ls regular expression not working when used with variables Post 303042071 by haiderali on Friday 13th of December 2019 01:17:24 AM
Old 12-13-2019
SHELL: UNIX : Ls regular expression not working when used with variables

If i do below command in unix prompt which static values (ie 27..97), it is working fine and gives desired output

Code:
>ls -d $WORKDIR/batch/somefilename_{27..97}.* 2>/dev/null
somefilename_27.sometxt
somefilename_28.sometxt
somefilename_29.sometxt
..
somefilename_97.sometxt


But if i want to include variables or pass arguments to regular expression then its giving me error "ls: cannot access /home/work/batch/somefilename_{27..96}.*: No such file or directory". But thats not true bec file is present but somehow with variables regex is not working.

Code:
>segStart="27"
>segEnd="96"
>myvar="$segStart..$segEnd"

>echo $segStart
27
>echo $segEnd
96
>echo $myvar
27..96

ls -d $WORKDIR/batch/somefilename_{$myvar}.*
"ls: cannot access /home/work/batch/somefilename_{27..96}.*: No such file or directory"
>array=($(ls -d $WORKDIR/batch/somefilename_$myvar.*  2>/dev/null))
>len=${#array[*]}
>echo $len
0

Can someone please advise here why the regular expression is not working when using ls and {..} with variables?

Note: I am trying to store all the directory names in an array whose directory name is between two integer number
for eg there are 1-100 dir available with name file_1.some file_2.some file_3.some .. file_100.some.
If user wants to get directory from 47 till 97, then i want to read that value, store them and pass it in above ls command.

If you have any other alternative that will also help.

Millions thanks in advance guys!

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Last edited by Akshay Hegde; 12-13-2019 at 03:45 AM..
 

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regex(3)						     Library Functions Manual							  regex(3)

Name
       re_comp, re_exec - regular expression handler

Syntax
       char *re_comp(s)
       char *s;

       re_exec(s)
       char *s;

Description
       The  subroutine	compiles  a string into an internal form suitable for pattern matching.  The subroutine checks the argument string against
       the last string passed to

       The subroutine returns 0 if the string s was compiled successfully; otherwise a string containing an  error  message  is  returned.  If	is
       passed 0 or a null string, it returns without changing the currently compiled regular expression.

       The  subroutine returns 1 if the string s matches the last compiled regular expression, 0 if the string s failed to match the last compiled
       regular expression, and -1 if the compiled regular expression was invalid (indicating an internal error).

       The strings passed to both and may have trailing or embedded newline characters; they are terminated by	nulls.	 The  regular  expressions
       recognized are described in the manual entry for given the above difference.

Diagnostics
       The subroutine returns -1 for an internal error.

       The subroutine returns one of the following strings if an error occurs:

       No previous regular expression
       Regular expression too long
       unmatched (
       missing ]
       too many () pairs
       unmatched )

See Also
       ed(1), ex(1), egrep(1), fgrep(1), grep(1)

																	  regex(3)
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