I wrote:
> I should have thought --exclude .[a-z]* or --exclude .??* would have got
> rid of most hidden files and directories. A quick check on my home
> directory suggests both would do the job [1].
Anne Wilson replied to it, dropping the footnote:
> [1] Assuming that you haven't changed LANG or LC_COLLATE to C, in
> which case .[a-z]* won't get .DCOP*.
Jeff Vian wrote:
> If you want to exclude the ones that start with an uppercase letter,
> change .[a-z]* to .[a-zA-Z]*. This is caused by the fact that shell
> globbing is case sensitive, so you need to explicitly list both cases in
> your expression.
Actually, I should have said .[a-Z]* .
But that's why I added the footnote. File globbing (at least in bash)
observes the LC_COLLATE environment variable, or LANG if LC_COLLATE is
not set. And that dictates how letters sort. The "C" locale observes
traditional case sensitivity, the way you suggest. But en_GB.UTF-8
(which I imagine both Anne and I are using), en_GB, en_US, fr_FR, and (I
imagine) most other locales sort "aAbBcCdD...", with other accented
characters in there, too.
So [a-Z]* gets the lot.
That's also why ls no longer lists the filenames beginning with capital
letters before the rest.
Hope this helps,
James.
--
E-mail address: james | The winds, however, get very lazy that time of year;
@westexe.demon.co.uk | they don't bother going around you, they just go
| right on through.
| -- Joe Zeff
