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I have the following lines in my .bash_aliases file: 

# Prettify and streamline listings
alias ls='ls --color'
alias ll='ls -l'
alias la='ls -a'
alias lla='ls -al'
alias lF='ls -F'
alias laF='ls -laF'
alias llF='ls -lF'
alias llaF='ls -alF'

The aliases work fine but I run into trouble when piping to egrep to look for invisible files. For example, if I want to list all the invisible files in the directory, and I type la | egrep '^\.' I get no output. Even if I skip the alias and type ls -a | egrep '^\.' I still get no output. If I leave out the caret, it works, but of course in that case egrep lists all files with a period in the filename, not just those that begin with a period.

However, if I rename the .bash_aliases file and log in again, so that these aliases are not active, then ls -a | egrep '^\.' works just fine to list the invisible files. Very odd.

I am trying to figure out why this is happening and I'm drawing a blank. Any ideas? Thanks!

verbose
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1 Answers1

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Try the following command and you will see some the reason:

ls --color | cat -v

You should use the alias ls='ls --color=auto' instead of ls='ls --color'.

nosid
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  • Very interesting! Thanks for your help. That fixed it, and I learned something. You rock, nosid. – verbose Apr 19 '12 at 00:39