Originally posted by: JPJ2

HI 

I am new to Unix and Korn shell scripting.  I have a need to check to see if a file exists in a directory using a regular expression.  FYI, the script is running in the directory the file exists in.

Example file to find = abc.txt_2017012212011111

Regular Expression '^(abc\.txt_)[0-9]{16}$' works with grep from the command line.

I would like to use this regex in a Korn shell script, but I am having trouble getting the above regex to work.

This script worked with a wildcard:

for f in abc*; do  

    [ -e "$f" ] && echo "files do exist" || echo "files do not exist"\
 break

done

But when I put the regex in insteady of the wildcard it doesn't work (shown below):

for f in ^(abc\.txt_)[0-9]{16}$; do  
    [ -e "$f" ] && echo "files do exist" || echo "files do not exist"\
 break
done

I am not sure how to do this or why is doesn't work.  I have seen posts using grep to put it in a list then do a for loop off the list but I couldn't get this to work either.

Any help is much appreciated.  Thanks!

Originally posted by: AncientAIXer

I don't believe that the for command syntax accepts regex.  It will automatically expand the in expression as if it was done with the ls command.  When I do this I usually test my expression with the ls command and only be as specific as needed.  I would try something like: abc.txt_[0-9]*

If you wish to use regex use something like:

for f in $(ls | grep '^abc.txt_[0-9]')