globbing-for-filenames-in-zsh.md

Globbing For Filenames In Zsh

Zsh has extensive support for globbing for filenames. Globbing is a short-hand, of sorts, for generating filenames that meet certain criteria. The generated filenames can be used with any command you might otherwise provide a filename to in a unix setting.

For example, consider a directory full of files including many that are named with numbers. You'd like to list all files that have numeric names.

Doing ls by itself gives the following result:

$ ls
10        11        2         3         4         801       92        code.rb   hello.txt

With the use of a numeric pattern, Zsh's globbing helps ls limit the set of listed files to just those with numeric names:

$ ls *[0-9]
10  11  2   3   4   801 92

This only scrapes the surface of what can be done with globbing in Zsh.

source

h/t Josh Davey