22

I thought this would do the trick:

find src -type f -regextype egrep -regex '.*(?<!\.d)\.ts'

But it doesn't seem to be matching anything.

I think that should work, but I guess this "egrep" flavor doesn't support negative backreferences unless I didn't escape something properly.

For reference,

 % find src -type f src/code-frame.d.ts # <-- I want to filter this out src/foo.ts src/index.ts

Is there another quick way to filter out .d.ts files from my search results?

 % find --version find (GNU findutils) 4.7.0-git
Improve this question
1

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
71

I don't believe egrep supports that syntax (your expression is a Perl compatible regular expression). But you don't need to use regular expressions in your example, just have multiple -name tests and apply a ! negation as appropriate:

find src -type f -name '*.ts' ! -name '*.d.ts'
Improve this answer
2
  • Is the space needed? i.e. will !-name '*.d.ts' work? Commented Jan 16, 2020 at 14:40
  • Yes, it is required. Try it and see for yourself. Commented Jan 17, 2020 at 8:17
29

You can get the result you want by filtering on file names only, negating the test for files you don’t want:

find src -type f -name \*.ts ! -name \*.d.ts
Improve this answer
2
  • What's the difference between \*.ts and '*.ts'? Commented Jan 16, 2020 at 14:41
  • They’re different ways of preventing expansion: \*.ts escapes the *, so it’s not considered as a globbing character, and '*.ts' single-quotes the whole expression, so none of it is expanded. Commented Jan 16, 2020 at 14:43
6

A simple (maybe less efficient) approach can be filter out the don't-want string.

find -name "*.ts" | egrep -v "\.d\.ts$"
Improve this answer
4
  • 5
    This would fail to filter out files that happen to have names ending in .d.ts but that also has a newline preceding that part of the filename. It's an unlikely technicality, but Unix filenames may contain newlines. Commented Dec 18, 2019 at 20:37
  • yes you are right, however from the data posted seems that is not the case and can be a valid solution candidate Commented Dec 18, 2019 at 20:41
  • 4
    Also, such special cases (if needed, or there is security concern) could be handled with for example find -name "*.ts" -print0 | egrep -vzZ "\.d\.ts$" | xargs -0i printf '{}\n'. I like this answer as additional one as it gives option for more complex handlings if needed (grep -P, perl -0, etc) Commented Dec 19, 2019 at 0:31
  • So can Windows apparently. Took me a long time to figure out why I couldn’t delete the “Icon” files that kept appearing in imported files. Commented Dec 19, 2019 at 5:00

You must log in to answer this question.

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.