Find files in multiple folder names

Question

I am trying to list all the files from dir1, dir2, dir3 and dir4 which might be anywhere in as a sub directory of my cwd using the find command. I tried the following with no success:

find . -type f -regextype posix-egrep -regex 'dir1/.+|dir2/.+|dir3/.+|dir4/.+'

I tried posix-extended as well. How can I list these files?

Answer 1

And if you want to search three folders named foo, bar, and baz for all "*.py" files, use this command:

find foo bar baz -name "*.py"

so if you want to display files from dir1 dir2 dir3 use find dir1 dir2 dir3 -type f

try this find . \( -name "dir1" -o -name "dir2" \) -exec ls '{}' \;

Answer 2

Just to let everyone know. Adding .*/ before each dir solved the problem since the regex is matching against the full path it seems.

Answer 3

This is my first idea after reading the previous answers:

find . -type f -regextype posix-egrep -regex ".*/(dir1|dir2|dir3|dir4)/.+"

This takes into account, that the regex must match the whole filename, and it is easier to understand.