With the find command, which argument to the -name flag will match files or directories beginning with a ‘.’ (period) ?
Answer: [.]*
Explanation/Reference:
From the man pages:
-name pattern
Base of file name (the path with the leading directories removed) matches shell pattern pattern. The metacharacters (`*’, `?’, and `[]’) match a `.’ at the start of the base name (this is a change in findutils-4.2.2; see section STANDARDS CONFORMANCE below). To ignore a directory and the files under it, use -prune; see an example in the description of -path. Braces are not recognised as being special, despite the fact that some shells including Bash imbue braces with a special meaning in shell patterns. The filename matching is performed with the use of the fnmatch(3) library function.—————–
This will not work in the unlikely event that a file exists that is actually named “[.]<anything>”. So it is always better to enclose the search pattern in quotation marks to prevent the shell from expanding the pattern: find -name ‘.*’
.\* will also work.
‘.*’ will work too ^^
Sorry it was already write in the end of the explanation.