Technical Briefs

ROHAN help Files

wildcards or metacharacters

If you have several files in your directory with similar names, you can list them all at once by using wildcards or metacharacters. These special characters are:

• * - replaces any number of characters in a file name. For example:

  rohan%  ls  *tion

  will list all files in the directory that end in tion (such as solution, polution or execution)

  rohan%  ls  Sa*

  will list all files in the directory that begin with Sa (such as Saturday, Sadly or Sarah).

• ? - replaces any one character only. For example:

  rohan%  ls s?t
  

  will list all files in the directory that start with s, end in t and are three letters long (sit or sat).

• [ ] - replaces any number of characters between the brackets. For example:

  rohan%  ls  [bcs]at

  will list all files in the directory that start with b, c, or s and end with at (bat, cat or sat).

  rohan%  ls  chap[1-3]

  will list all files that start with chap and end in 1, 2 or 3.