HP-UX 11i System Administration Handbook and Toolkit, Second Edition

File Name Expansion and Wild Cards

Before we cover additional file system related commands, it is worth taking a look at file name expansion. An overview of file name expansion is useful to ensure that you're comfortable with this topic before we cover additional commands.

Table 21-2 lists some common file name expansion and pattern matching.

Table 21-2. File Name Expansion and Pattern Matching

Character(s)	Example	Description
*	1) ls *.c	Match zero or more characters
?	2) ls conf.?	Match any single character
[list]	3) ls conf.[co]	Match any character in list
[lower-upper]	4) ls libdd.9873[5-6].sl	Match any character in range
str{str1,str2,str3,...}	5) ls ux*.{700,300}	Expand str with contents of {}
~	6) ls -a ~	Home directory
~username	7) ls -a ~gene	Home directory ...