GNU bug report logs - #58134
grep for windows Include GLOB pattern with double star doesn't seem to work

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From: Alex Benoit <Alexandre.Benoit <at> microsoft.com>
To: Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>
Cc: "58134-done <at> debbugs.gnu.org" <58134-done <at> debbugs.gnu.org>
Subject: bug#58134: grep for windows Include GLOB pattern with double star doesn't seem to work
Date: Wed, 28 Sep 2022 17:29:35 +0000

Thanks Paul, looks like the syntax reference I was using was not the right one.

What I'm really trying to do is a bit more complex and I cannot figure out if it's just not a supported feature of grep or if I'm not able to come up with the right syntax for it.

I am trying to make an include filter which will match any xml file that is in a folder with a specific name, no matter how deep that folder is.

For instance, if I run the grep command from /, and I have the files:
/a/b/folder/file.xml
/a/b/file2.xml
/a/folder/file3.xml
/folder/file4.xml

I want to match the file.xml, file3.xml and file4.xml, but not file2.xml, because it is not under a folder named "folder".

The command I would imagine would look something like:
grep -l --include="*/folder/*.xml" pattern .

I tried a couple different ways to write this and nothing worked, I wonder if grep just does not support this feature.

Note that I'm using the grep for Windows, so I don't have the typical linux tools or shell expansion tricks I can use, I'm trying to do this all in grep.

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu> 
Sent: Wednesday, September 28, 2022 10:07 AM
To: Alex Benoit <Alexandre.Benoit <at> microsoft.com>
Cc: 58134-done <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: bug#58134: grep for windows Include GLOB pattern with double star doesn't seem to work

On 9/27/22 16:19, Alex Benoit via Bug reports for GNU grep wrote:
> However, this worked:
> grep -rl --include="*.xml" foo .
>
> Is the double star supported on Windows?

Yes and no. It's a POSIX glob, which means "**" is equivalent to "*",
and that's what's supported. Whether it's MS-Windows shouldn't matter.


> What is the proper way to do it?

Looks like you found it already.

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