rm [a-z]* isn't a regular expression because it's being interpreted by the
shell, which would use the * as a wild card. In a regular expression, the
* would match ZERO or MORE of the proceding characters, so your expression
would have removed all files.
I ran this command on a RH 7.1 box and it only deleted the lowercase
files. Also, you can save yourself a bit of typing by using this instead:
touch aaaa AAAA bbbb BBBB 1234 .abcd
On Tue, 4 Dec 2001, Simper, Brian D wrote:
>
> Try this in an empty directory and let me know if this is a bug or a feature
> or an error on my part.
>
> Create several files of upper and lower case names:
>
> touch aaaa
> touch AAAA
> touch bbbb
> touch BBBB
> touch 1234
> touch .abcd
>
> Now use a regular expression to delete all files starting with a lower case
> letter:
>
> rm [a-z]*
>
> When I was experimenting with this all of the files starting with *any*
> alphabetic character were deleted. This was unexpected and I'm not sure if
> I am misinterpreting the regular expression or if I am delusional. Let me
> know what you get. FYI, I am using Red Hat Linux 7.2 so I would be
> interested if it's just me.
>
> Brian
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