List files with certain extensions with ls and grep

Question

I just want to get the files from the current dir and only output .mp4 .mp3 .exe files nothing else. So I thought I could just do this:

ls | grep \.mp4$ | grep \.mp3$ | grep \.exe$

But no, as the first grep will output just mp4's therefor the other 2 grep's won't be used.

Any ideas?

PS, Running this script on Slow Leopard.

Answer 1

egrep -- extended grep -- will help here

ls | egrep '\.mp4$|\.mp3$|\.exe$

should do the job.

Answer 2

ls | grep "\.mp4$
\.mp3$
\.exe$"

Answer 3

the easiest way is to just use ls

ls *.mp4 *.mp3 *.exe

Answer 4

No need for grep. Shell wildcards will do the trick.

ls *.mp4 *.mp3 *.exe

If you have run

shopt -s nullglob

then unmatched globs will be removed altogether and not be left on the command line unexpanded.

If you want case-insensitive globbing (so *.mp3 will match foo.MP3):

shopt -s nocaseglob

Answer 5

Just in case: why don't you use find?

find -iname '*.mp3' -o -iname '*.exe' -o -iname '*.mp4'

Answer 6

In case you are still looking for an alternate solution:

ls | grep -i -e "\.tcl$" -e "\.exe$" -e "\.mp4$"

Feel free to add more -e flags if needed.

Answer 7

Why not:

ls *.{mp3,exe,mp4}

I'm not sure where I learned it - but I've been using this.

Answer 8

Use regular expressions with find:

find . -iregex '.*\(mp3\|mp4\|exe\)' -printf '%f\n'

If you're piping the filenames:

find . -iregex '.*\(mp3\|mp4\|exe\)' -printf '%f\0' | xargs -0 dosomething

This protects filenames that contain spaces or newlines.