'find' across directories named …/dirnameXX/… with XX variable

Question

I am executing this command to find certain files in specific directory:

find ./rgs/test/maesXX/master/stdlist -name \*.extract \
     -mtime +30 \! -size 0 -exec ls -lrt {} \;

where XX could be any number between 1-100.

Can I use a regex for this purpose? How would I do that? Are there other ways?

angus · Accepted Answer · 2012-01-11 06:55:43Z

You can pass more than one path to find, so the best way (IMHO) is to let the shell do the expansion.

If you don't have other directories starting with maes there, then this should suffice, and is simpler:

find ./rgs/test/maes*/master/stdlist ...

But if you really need to match that pattern exactly, you can do

find ./rgs/test/maes[0-9][0-9]/master/stdlist ...

for maes00 -- maes99, or

find ./rgs/test/maes{[1-9],[1-9][0-9],100}/master/stdlist ...

for maes1 -- maes100 (I didn't get which one was your case).

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