How to filter a regex (exclude special characters)

Let's say that I need to filter all my files' names that don't include special characters.

ASDA123fasf - would pass
asasdasd*dasd - wouldn't pass

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1 Answer

One of many alternatives would be find . -maxdepth 1 -iregex '.*/[a-z0-9.]*' -ls

If you think you may need to use this often, you could even create an alias to shorten the command:

Note: The below alias will only work in the current directory, although you could easily create a script that would parse a command line argument for the directory..

alias myls="find . -maxdepth 1 -iregex '.*/[a-z0-9.]*' -ls"

If you were to do that, every time you issued the command myls you'd get the desired output without all the extra typing. Lazy or efficient, you decide.

Sources:Byte Commander comment here

- specifically this answer

man find

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