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I am trying to find a way to list all file names in a folder that matches this pattern :

20131106XXXXX.pdf

The prefix is the date, and the content and length of XXXX vary across files, and I only care about pdf files.

Anyone could advise a way to do this?

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  • 1
    Is it actual X or could it be any alpha character? Commented Nov 7, 2013 at 2:43
  • 1
    sorry, I should be more specific. XXXX here means characters that might be in other language(simplified Chinese). Commented Nov 7, 2013 at 2:50

2 Answers 2

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10

Try this

list.files(path="./yourdir",pattern="[[:digit:]]{8}.*\\.pdf")
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thanks, can I specify the 8 digit number here? Say, I want the prefix to be exact '20131106'
yes, the pattern would match any 8 digit number followed by 0 or more arbitrary characters, and extension .pdf. Replace it with "20131106.*\\.pdf" to match only files starting with 20131106. Check ?regex for more info on regular expressions.
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You can use regex. 

files <- dir(pattern="^[0-9]{8}.*\\.pdf")
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