I know that there is an operator similar to the *, with the difference that it works into all the sub-directories.
Assume you have a folder structure:
. ├── bar │ ├── foo │ │ └── baz │ │ └── hurz │ │ └── lolz │ │ └── hello.txt │ └── poit.txt └── fnord.txt Then ls with single star * would list:
$ ls *.txt fnord.txt I expect the double star operator ** to work on the subfolders, yet it is not complete. I know that this can work as I had this enabled on another machine yet I forgot how.
$ ls **/*.txt bar/poit.txt I was expecting the output to look like:
ls **/*.txt bar/foo/baz/hurz/lolz/hello.txt bar/poit.txt fnord.txt How is the ** operator called and how do I activate it properly?
1 Answer
You are looking for the globstar shell option which was introduced in bash version 4.
If you unsure what version you are running you can test that via:
$ echo $BASH_VERSION 4.4.12(1)-release Check if it is enabled via:
$ shopt globstar It defaults to off. If you want to use it you have to enable it:
$ shopt -s globstar Then it will work as expected. You might want to add this to your .bashrc for it to be always enabled in new shells.
To disable it:
$ shopt -u globstar See help shopt for details.
