Re: bash, grep, and regular expressions

[Freddy Freeloader <fredddy@cableone.net>]

Todd A. Jacobs wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 18, 2005 at 03:58:42AM -0800, Freddy Freeloader wrote:
>
>
> > I appreciate your input but neither one of the expressions filter
> > anything on my machines.  They both return sets that include
>
>
> Then you're obviously having problems with your pipes and/or shell
> quoting. This works fine with 2.05b. If I were you, I'd use "set -x -v"
> to see what's going on, as well as finding out if you have any weird
> shopt options set.
>
> You might also want to look at your aliases, and find out if you've done
> something weird there. You can also run bash with the --norc and
> --noprofile flags, to ensure that you're starting with a clean slate.
> You might even want to try using a different account that hasn't been
> futzed with, to see if you still have problems.
>
> Since it works for everyone *but* you, the problem is neither regular
> expressions nor bash, per se. It's something to do with your
> configuration. So approach it as a debugging exercise, and investigate
> accordingly.
Ding, Ding, Ding....

We have a winner ladies and gentlemen.  It's the aliasing of ls to ls 
-al that screws it up.  Don't ask me how, but it does.  The following 
expression works perfectly after removing the alias.

ls -al | grep -e [0-9][0-9]:[0-9][0-9] [.]'

This returns only hidden files and folders.

ls -al | grep -e [0-9][0-9]:[0-9][0-9] [.]'

This returns only files and folders that are not hidden.

These expressions would not work when ls was aliased to ls -al nor if 
the full time column was not used.

Thank you very much for your help.  It's the type of stuff only 
experience can teach me.

I would also like to say thank you to all the rest of you who gave me 
suggestions.  I appreciate all your time and effort.  I guess we all 
learned something on this one.