10 Wildcard One-Liners to Match File Names in Linux (Tested Examples)

Updated: 8 October 2026 · Applies to: bash 5.2 on Debian 13 and bash 5.3 on Ubuntu 26.04 (identical output on both)

Ten wildcard one-liners for everyday file work on a server, each with the output it gave. Copy the one you need and change the names. Why each pattern works is explained in Linux wildcards and globbing; for patterns with find and safe use with rm, see using wildcards safely with find, ls, cp, mv and rm.

All examples ran in this folder:

$ ls
IMG_0001.JPG     access.log.3.gz           error.log    report10.txt
IMG_0002.jpg     backup-2026-09-28.tar.gz  logo.png     report2.txt
access.log       backup-2026-10-01.tar.gz  nginx.conf   site1
access.log.1     backup-2026-10-05.tar.gz  photo.jpeg   site2
access.log.2.gz  backup-2026-10-07.tar.gz  report1.txt  site3

1. Rotated logs, but not the current one

$ ls access.log.*
access.log.1  access.log.2.gz  access.log.3.gz

2. Names with exactly one character in a position

$ ls report?.txt
report1.txt  report2.txt

report10.txt is left out because ? is always one character.

3. Backups from a range of dates

$ ls backup-2026-10-0[1-5]*
backup-2026-10-01.tar.gz  backup-2026-10-05.tar.gz

4. Several extensions at once

$ ls *.{jpeg,png}
logo.png  photo.jpeg

If one of the extensions has no files, ls reports it, for example ls: cannot access '*.webp': No such file or directory.

5. Upper and lower case in one go

$ (shopt -s nocaseglob; ls *.jpg)
IMG_0001.JPG  IMG_0002.jpg

The brackets run it in a subshell, so case-insensitive matching does not stay on in your session.

6. Hidden files only

$ ls -d .[!.]*
.env  .htaccess

7. The same file in every site folder

$ grep DB_NAME */wp-config.php
site1/wp-config.php:define( 'DB_NAME', 'shop_wp' );
site2/wp-config.php:define( 'DB_NAME', 'blog_wp' );

site3 has no wp-config.php, so it is skipped without an error.

8. Count the matching files

$ files=(backup-*.tar.gz); echo "${#files[@]}"
4

9. Rename every file with one extension

$ for f in *.jpeg; do mv -v -- "$f" "${f%.jpeg}.jpg"; done
renamed 'photo.jpeg' -> 'photo.jpg'

10. Preview, then delete old backups

$ echo rm -v backup-2026-09-*
rm -v backup-2026-09-28.tar.gz
$ rm -v backup-2026-09-*
removed 'backup-2026-09-28.tar.gz'

Run the echo line first, check the list, then press the Up arrow and remove echo.

Linux file names are case-sensitive, so *.jpg on its own does not match IMG_0001.JPG; use example 5 when uploads come from phones or Windows PCs. To search below the current folder as well, use find with a quoted pattern, as shown in the find and wildcards guide. To check how much space the matched files use, see how to find the largest files and directories.