Recursive glob?

Question

I'd like to write something like this:

$ ls **.py

in order to get all .py filenames, recursively walking a directory hierarchy.

Even if there are .py files to find, the shell (bash) gives this output:

ls: cannot access **.py: No such file or directory

Any way to do what I want?

EDIT: I'd like to specify that I'm not interested in the specific case of ls, but the question is about the glob syntax.

Related: The result of ls * , ls ** and ls *** – Stéphane Chazelas Jul 06 '23 at 17:42 — Stéphane Chazelas, Jul 06 '23 at 17:42

score 189 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 06 '23 at 17:34

189

In order to do recursive globs in bash, you need the globstar feature from Bash version 4 or higher.

From the Bash documentation:

globstar
If set, the pattern ** used in a filename expansion context will match all files and zero or more directories and subdirectories. If the pattern is followed by a /, only directories and subdirectories match.

For your example pattern:

shopt -s globstar
ls -d -- **/*.py

You must run shopt -s globstar in order for this to work. This feature is not enabled by default in bash, by running shopt you are activating the feature.

edited Jul 06 '23 at 17:34

Jack M

156

answered Oct 04 '12 at 15:47

jordanm

42,678

2

I'd recommend also enabling nullglob – glenn jackman Oct 04 '12 at 16:50
8

@glennjackman But before enabling nullglob, I would strongly advise reading following warnings. – Serge Stroobandt Jun 19 '13 at 21:53
4

^ Warnings have moved here. – rgajrawala Nov 29 '15 at 07:42
4

With bash 3.2, wc -l {**,.}/*.py works just fine – Raphael Feb 28 '18 at 19:50
@Raphael I double checked the release notes and it definitely says that it was introduced in 4.0. Perhaps you distribution has backported a patch for it? IIRC RHEL 5 had backported some features. Also of note, it's been 9 years since bash 4 was released... – jordanm Feb 28 '18 at 20:21
Um, I guess that's possible? I was working on macOS 10.13, who knows what they ship why... – Raphael Feb 28 '18 at 21:56
Wayback Machine link, for the link above: https://web.archive.org/web/http://mywiki.wooledge.org/glob – Pi Delport Apr 08 '19 at 11:23
Too bad the GNU C library glob function has no GLOB_STAR equivalent. – Kaz Jul 07 '23 at 03:05

score 20 · Answer 2 · edited Dec 19 '20 at 11:35

Since Bash 4 (also including zsh) a new globbing option (globstar) has been added which treats the pattern ** differently when it's set.

It is matching the wildcard pattern and returning the file and directory names that match then by replacing the wildcard pattern in the command with the matched items.

Normally when you use **, it works similar to *, but it's recurses all the directories recursively (like a loop).

To see if it's enabled, check it by shopt globstar (in scripting, use shopt -q globstar).

The example **.py would work only for the current directory, as it doesn't return list of directories which can be recurses, so that's why you need to use multiple directory-level wildcard **/*.py, so it can go deeper.

Look here for examples of finding files recursively.

Thanks! The globstar can be enabled by shopt -s globstar. – Ladislav Ondris Mar 24 '21 at 14:24 — Ladislav Ondris, Mar 24 '21 at 14:24

score 20 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 04 '12 at 15:41

20

find . -name '*.py'

** doesn't do anything more than a single *, both operate in the current directory

answered Oct 04 '12 at 15:41

doneal24

5,059

Interesting. Though, I'm more focused on the glob syntax by itself, because I have to use it in a configuration file (include directive). I don't need a list of files. – Paolo Oct 04 '12 at 15:48
2

@Doug O'Neal, that's no longer true. bash has now copied that zsh feature (though it adopted a syntax closer to that of ksh93 and like ksh, doesn't support zsh's globbing qualifiers yet which limits its usefulness) – Stéphane Chazelas Oct 04 '12 at 20:34
1

There are lots of things you can do with find if you don't have bash 4. Examples: yourcommand \find . -name '.py'`` (note the backticks); `find . -name '.py' -exec yourcommand {} ;`. – Mars Oct 28 '15 at 18:43

Recursive glob?

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