Find all files matching a given pattern AND excluding a given pattern?

Question

I want to find all files in a directory that match a given pattern say A and don't match a given pattern say B

What I've tried: Doing "ls -I B" gives me all files which match the pattern B. But I'm not getting any leads on how to do what I want to.

How does `ls -l B` give you all the files that don't match the pattern `B`? — twalberg, Feb 28 '14 at 17:34

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 28 '14 at 15:11

8

You can use find . -name "pattern" and then add a negative condition for the pattern you don't want to have:

find . -name "pattern_A" ! -name "pattern_B"

Let's look for those files whose name contains a A but not a B:

$ ls -1
adfadAadsa
adfBasdA
Aksjdflksj
asdfBasdf
Badsf

$ find . -name "*A*" ! -name "*B*"
./Aksjdflksj
./adfadAadsa

answered Feb 28 '14 at 15:11

fedorqui

2

+1 `-regex` option of `find` is often useful to allow for complex patterns. – jaypal singh Feb 28 '14 at 15:19
1

You can add depth control. To not search subdirectories: `find . -maxdepth 1 -name "pattern_A" ! -name "pattern_B"` – shawnhcorey Aug 06 '16 at 19:02

1 Answers1