Globbing patterns mini-tutorial

Basics

* - any number of characters

# Include all subfolders of react/
ls react/*

? - single character

# Include folders like backup1, backup2, etc.
ls backup?

[] - set of possible characters

# Include man or men or mon
ls m[a,e,o]m
# Include folders starting with 'ma' and ending with any alphabet letter
ls ma[a-z]

[!] - set of excluded characters

# Include anything except man or men or mon
ls m[!a,e,o]m

{} - set of possible terms

# Include 'project/src' and 'project/dist' and 'project/docs'
ls project/{src,dist,docs}

More advanced examples

Select any file ending with test.js from the subfolders:

ls **/*test.js

Select .js files inside direct subfolders of packages folder:

ls packages/*/*.js

Select .js files recursively, excluding node_modules:

ls packages/*/!(node_modules)/**/*.js"

Resources

Utility for testing globbing patterns:
http://www.globtester.com/