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Accepted
Zanna
Asked: 2016-09-27 02:21:13 +0800 CST

How should I glob for all hidden files?

  • 772

I want to carry out some action (say chown) on all the hidden files in a directory.

I know that this .* is not a good idea because it will also find the current . and parent .. directories (I know that rm will fail to operate on . and .. but other commands, including chown and chmod, will happily take effect)

But all my hidden files have different names!

How should I glob for all hidden files while excluding . and .. ?

command-line

3 Answers

  1. In Bash use:

    GLOBIGNORE=".:.."

    to hide the . and .. directories. This also sets the dotglob option: * matches both hidden and non-hidden files.

    You can also do:

    shopt -s dotglob

    Gilles :)

    • 24
  2. Best Answer

    You can use the following extglob pattern:

    .@(!(.|))

    • . matches a literal . at first

    • @() is a extglob pattern, will match one of the patterns inside, as we have only one pattern inside it, it will pick that

    • !(.|) is another extglob pattern (nested), which matches any file with no or one .; As we have matched . at start already, this whole pattern will match all files starting with . except . and ...

    extglob is enabled on interactive sessions of bash by default in Ubuntu. If not, enable it first:

    shopt -s extglob

    Example:

    $ echo .@(!(.|))
.bar .foo .spam
    • 21

  3. You can use a find command here. For example something like

    find -type f -name ".*" -exec chmod 775 {} \;

    This will find hidden files and change permissions

    Edit to include the comment by @gerrit:

    find -type f -maxdepth 1 -name ".*" -exec chmod 775 {} \;

    This will limit the search top the current directory instead of searching recursively.

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