Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!rochester!ken
From: ken@cs.rochester.edu (Ken Yap)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Wildcard expressions from the command line.
Message-ID: <1990Jan5.061043.17339@cs.rochester.edu>
Date: 5 Jan 90 06:10:43 GMT
References: <569@auto-trol.UUCP>
Reply-To: ken@cs.rochester.edu
Distribution: usa
Organization: University of Rochester Computer Science Department
Lines: 13
Address: Rochester, NY 14627, (716) 275-1448

|The problem is that this syntax cannot be used on the command line. This is
|needed to be able to perform wildcard file manipulation. For example, if I
|want to copy all files with a ".ftn" extension to a ".for" extension, how can
|I copy these without writing a special shell script? If I could use the "ed"
|regular wildcard expression, it would look like this:
|
|     cp \(*\).ftn \1.for
|
|Is there any way to do this from the command line?

Ah, my favourite example of using sh in a pipeline:

	ls *.ftn | sed 's/\(.*\).ftn/cp & \1.for/' | sh