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I am trying to port a script from a Ubuntu Linux box to a macOS laptop and I'm struggling to get my find with a regex setup correctly.

In a directory, I have the following files.

/Users/kevin/Documents/Audio/arn/2400/Report2400.clip.mp3
/Users/kevin/Documents/Audio/arn/2400/Report2400.clip1.mp3
/Users/kevin/Documents/Audio/arn/2400/Report2400.clip2.mp3
/Users/kevin/Documents/Audio/arn/2400/Report2400.clip3.mp3
/Users/kevin/Documents/Audio/arn/2400/Report2400.clip4.mp3
/Users/kevin/Documents/Audio/arn/2400/Report2400.clip5.mp3
/Users/kevin/Documents/Audio/arn/2400/Report2400.clip6.mp3
/Users/kevin/Documents/Audio/arn/2400/Report2400.clip7.mp3
/Users/kevin/Documents/Audio/arn/2400/Report2400.clip8.mp3

running this command:

find . -regex 'Report2400\.clip[0-9]+\.mp3'

I'm expecting to get 8 files, the 8 with a number after "clip", but nothing is returned.

What am I missing? I know it's basic, but I'm close to checking myself into a mental hospital.

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  • it's better to install GNU tools, they're much more functional. If you use brew they'll be prefixed with g like gfind, ggrep... and you can use an alias to replace the BSD tools
    – phuclv
    Commented 8 hours ago

1 Answer 1

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I believe this should work:

find -E . -regex '.*/Report2400\.clip[0-9]+\.mp3'

According to man find, you -E to get extended regular expressions:

 -E      Interpret regular expressions followed by -regex and -iregex pri-
         maries as extended (modern) regular expressions rather than basic
         regular expressions (BRE's).  The re_format(7) manual page fully
         describes both formats.

Also, according to man find, you need .*/ to include the whole path:

 -regex pattern
         True if the whole path of the file matches pattern using regular
         expression.  To match a file named ``./foo/xyzzy'', you can use
         the regular expression ``.*/[xyz]*'' or ``.*/foo/.*'', but not
         ``xyzzy'' or ``/foo/''.
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  • 1
    This did the trick! Thanks so much. Sounds like I need to educate myself on the differences in extended and basic regular expressions. I had played around with using the -E argument, but I was still missing the mark because of the full path being checked, not just the filename.
    – Kevin Davis
    Commented 18 hours ago

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