Search for files in a git repository by extensions

Question

I have a string like this *.{jpg,png} for example, but the string could also be just *.scss - in fact it is an editorconfig.

Then I want to search for every file of this extension which is tracked by my git repository.

I've tried several methods but didn't find any sufficient solution.

The closest one I've got is: git ls-tree -r master --name-only | grep -E ".*\.jpg"

But this is only working for single file extensions not for something like this git ls-tree -r master --name-only | grep -E ".*\.{jpg,png}".

Anyone could help me?

Answer 1

Try this:

git ls-tree -r master --name-only | grep -E '.*\.(jpg|png)'

The expression you tried to pass via -E option is interpreted as any characters (.*), the dot (\.), and the string {jpg,png}. I guess you are confusing the Bash brace expansion with the alternation (|) in a regular expression group (the parenthesis).

Consider using the end-of-line anchor: '.*\.(jpg|png)$'.

Without grep

As @0andriy pointed out you can pass patterns to git ls-files as follows:

git ls-files '*.jpg' '*.png'

Note, you should escape the arguments in order to prevent the filename expansion (globbing). In particular, the asterisk (*) character

matches any number of repeats of the character string or RE preceding it, including zero instances.

But this obviously will work only for the simple git patterns. For a slightly more complicated case such as "extension matching N characters from a given set" you will need a regular expression (and grep, for example).