Re: bash, grep, and regular expressions

[Freddy Freeloader <fredddy@cableone.net>]

Glenn English wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-02-17 at 16:08 -0800, Freddy Freeloader wrote:
>
>
> > What I've been attempting to do with grep 
> > and regular expressions is list only non-hidden directories and/or 
> > files.  I am unable to come up with an expression that will elimate 
> > hidden files and return non-hidden files at the same time.
> >
> > ls -al | grep -v ' \.\<[a-zA-Z0-9].*\>' # returns everything
> >
> > ls | grep -e '\<[^.][[:alnum:]]'  # returns everything
> >
> > ls | grep -e '\<[.][[:alnum:]]'  # returns an empty set
>
>
>  ls -al | grep -v ' \.'   seems to work here???

Excellent. That fixes part of the problem.  However, it only returns 
directories as files almost always have a .ext on the end of the file 
name and this expression filters out all lines with .'s in them.