On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 12:01:11PM -0700, javajo91 wrote: > "For example, if you wanted to list all of the files in the directories /usr > and usr2, you could type ls /usr*. If you were only interested in the files > beginning with the letters b and e in these directories, you could type ls > /usr*/[be]* to list them."
That assumes there are no subdirectories in /usr, which is a silly thing to assume. > When i type /usr*/[be]* i do not get all the files within /usr that begin > with a b or an e but instead get ALL the files within /usr/bin and /usr/etc. The glob is expanded according to the shell's normal rules. /usr*/[be]* matches /usr/bin and /usr/etc which are directories on your system. No problem so far. Then the shell passes those results as arguments to the ls command. So you're effective running ls /usr/bin /usr/etc ls recurses into each directory that is explicitly given as an argument. If you want it NOT to do that, use the -d option.
