I want to list all the files, in directory I am currently in, with for example "a" in their name. I know that the first part of the command would be ls -l, but i do not know how to finish it.
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You should read up on glob wildcards, including * and ?.
*matches zero or more characters?matches exactly one character[...]matches one of a set of characters (eg[abc]matches any ofa,b,c)
So to find all file names containing abc you simply use the glob *abc*. This can be used anywhere you want this list:
ls *abc*
rm -i *abc*
echo *abc*
A note of warning, though, to say that the command line gets run after the expansion. (It's the shell performing the expansion, not the command.) So if you had a filename like -abc, the expansion of ls *abc will result in ls -abc, which will result in ls parsing the set of flags -labc with no filename argument. Fix this by prefixing wildcard expansions with ./ to force an explicit path to the current directory
ls ./*abc*
rm -i ./*abc*
echo ./*abc*
Note that for ls, if any of the arguments is a directory, the contents of that directory will be listed instead of the directory name itself. Fix that with the -d flag, and while you're there use -q if your version of ls supports it,
ls -dq ./*abc*
Chris Davies
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ls | grep abut that's 'cause I'm inherently lazy. Definitely don't do that. If you want to learn why you shouldn't parse 'ls' then click here. And now I know! – KGIII Nov 16 '20 at 03:05ls -d *a*to match file names containinga(useman lsto find out about-d) – Chris Davies Nov 16 '20 at 09:32