I am trying to find all the files whose name contains exactly 14 digits (I'm trying to match a timestamp in the filename). I'm not sure how to get the GNU find regexp syntax for repetitions right.
I've tried find -regex ".*[0-9]{14} and find -regex ".*[0-9]\{14\}, neither of these turns up any results. Can you help me with the syntax?
Try changing the -regextype parameter to find.
Changes the regular expression syntax understood by -regex and -iregex tests which occur later on the command line. Currently-implemented types are emacs (this is the default), posix-awk, posix-basic, posix-egrep and posix-extended.
remember, GNU find's -regex matches a whole path. Anyway, you can use a combination of find and grep to do the task, eg to find exactly 14 digits with no other characters
find . -type f -printf "%f\n" | grep -E "\b[0-9]{14}\b"
modify to suit your needs
Example:
$ find . -regextype grep -regex '.*/[0-9]\{14\}.*'
./00000000000054
./00000000000098
./00000000000042
./00000000000075
./00000000000027
./00000000000080
./00000000000083
./00000000000077
Strange, I just gave it a try and I could not get this work. Here's a workaround anyway (matching 2 consecutive numbers):
$ls
a123.txt a1b2c3.txt a45.txt b123.txt
$find -regex '.*[^0-9][0-9][0-9][^0-9].*'
./a45.txt
