Lab 6 - Wildcards

A Brief description of the wildcards.

wildcards

Cheat Sheet here

Video here

Note: Wildcards are all about pattern matching. They can be confusing but once you get a hold of them, you will never forget them. The table above gives you a summary of each wildcard. The goal of this lab is to give you enough practice for you to master wildcards in their basics form. Wildcards are very powerful because they can be combined to match pretty much any pattern that you can think of.

IMPORTANT!!! READ ME!!!!!

Before working on this lab, run this command:
curl https://cis106.com/assets/lab6/lab6.sh | bash
This will create a directory called lab6 in your home directory.

Question 1 | Using the * Wildcard

In your home directory, you should have a directory called lab6, if you don’t have it, make sure to run the curl command in the READ ME part of this lab.

List all the log files located in the lab6/q1 directory.
Create a directory called log-files inside the lab6 directory. Move all the log files to the log-files directory.
Long list all the configuration files in the lab6/q1 directory. sorted by file size. Modify the ls command with the proper options so that the output looks like this: (Notice the date). Then create the directory lab6/config-files and move all the config files in lab6/q1.
```
-rw-r--r-- 1 7.5K 08/19/21 /etc/pnm2ppa.conf
```
You can see a full list of control characters for the date here

Take a screenshot of your terminal showing all the commands that you used to complete this question.

Question 2 | Using the ? and [] wildcard

Create the directory: hidden-files inside the lab6 directory.
List only the hidden files inside lab6/q2 directory then copy them to the hidden-files directory.
List all the files with a 2 letter file extension in the lab6/q2 directory then remove them.
List and then remove all the files with a 4 letter file extension in the lab6/q2 directory that start with letter T and end with letter x
List all the files, inside the lab6/q2 directory, that start with letter l (lowercase L) or letter r, have one vowel after letter l or letter r, and and a number before the file extension.
Create a directory called random inside the lab6 directory.
Use the wildcard in step 5 to move the files to the random directory

Take a screenshot of your terminal showing all the commands that you used to complete this question.

Question 3 | Using brace expansion.

The curly braces are not a wildcard but they are equally useful. The curly braces allow you to generate arbitrary strings to use with commands.

Problem 1:
In the lab6 directory, create the following directory structure. Display a tree of the directory. Take a screenshot:

wallpapers/
└── cars
    ├── 1080p
    ├── 2k
    └── 4k

Problem 2:
Clear your terminal. in the lab6 directory, create the following directory structure. Display a tree of the directory. Take a screenshot:

assets/
├── imgs
│   ├── large
│   └── small
└── video
    ├── large
    └── small

Problem 3:
Clear your terminal. in the lab6 directory, create the following directory structure. You need to create the pdf files as well. Remember mkdir creates directories while touch creates files. Display a tree of the directory. Take a screenshot:

docs/
└── books
    ├── history
    │   ├── fall
    │   │   └── book.pdf (this is a file not a directory)
    │   └── spring
    │       └── book.pdf (this is a file not a directory)
    └── math
        ├── 2024
        │   └── book.pdf (this is a file not a directory)
        └── 2025
            └── book.pdf (this is a file not a directory)

Problem 4: Brace expansion comes handy in other scenarios too. Here are some examples:

From the root of the filesystem, create 3 files in the ~/lab6/q3 directory called: program.py, people.csv, data.xls.
From the root of the filesystem, remove the files: _file0.old _file1.old, _file2.old located in ~/lab6/q3

Take a screenshot of your terminal showing all the commands that you used to complete this question.

Challenge Question

Run this curl command:
curl https://cis106.com/assets/lab6/lab6cq.sh | bash

This will create a directory in your home directory called: challenge-Lab6 This directory has a bunch of files. Organize these file so that each file type has its own directory. Each file type must be moved to its respective directory. When you are done, the challenge-Lab6 directory should look like this:

Note: The directory tree you see here is just an example, you may or may not have the same files.

challenge-lab6/
├── audio
│   ├── aac
│   │   └── all-aac-files-here
│   └── mp3
│       └── all-mp3-files-here
├── docs
│   ├── docx
│   │   └── all-docs-files-here
│   ├── pdf
│   │   └── all-pdf-files-here
│   └── xls
│       └── all-xls-files-here
└── images
    ├── jpg
    │   └── all-jpg-files-here
    └── png
        └── all-png-files-here

Note: The directory tree you see here is just an example, you may or may not have the same files.

Here is what you are not allowed to do:

Create a directory for every file type. It defeats the purpose of the question. There are a lot of file types but you should be able to logically categorize them.
Move the files 1 by 1. It defeats the purpose of learning how to use wildcards.
Create the directories 1 by 1. It defeats the purpose of learning brace expansions.

Tips

List the directory sorted by file extension.
Write down all the different file types and come up with a categorization
There should be a directory for every category.
Create the directory tree using brace expansion. By this point you should know how many and which directories you will need. There should not be a single directory with only 1 file.

Take a screenshot of your terminal showing all the commands that you used to complete this question.

What will you Submit:

Place all the screenshots and answers to your questions in a the lab6.md file.
Convert your markdown file to pdf
Push the changes to Github:
git pull; git add .; git commit -m "lab5 complete; git push"
Submit the URL of lab6.md and the pdf file
Take a snapshot of your system and delete the previous snapshot.

Special Note

You are going to be using the git commands a lot. Here is a quick reference:

git clone repository/url/here: is the command to clone a repository where cloning means downloading a repository to your computer
git pull: to pull/synchronize your repository from github to your local machine. Always run this command BEFORE you start working VS Code
git add .: to track all the changes made to your file.
git commit -m "label for your changes here": this command will label all the changes you added with the add command
git push: will send all your changes to your github repository

Always run the commands in this order: pull => add => commit => push Never use the github website to make changes to your repository unless you know what you are doing and can remember to pull the changes before working on your local repository!