How to list all source files (*.c, *.cpp, *.h)

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I'd like to find source files (*.c, *.cpp, *.h) that contain in Linux/MinGW/Cygwin, and recursively in all sub directories.

My basic idea is using find and grep. However, building a regular expression that can check given file name is either *.c, *.cpp, or *.h isn't easy. Could you help me out?

find grep regex

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asked Feb 14 '11 at 18:25

Nullptr

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6 Answers

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up vote12down vote

This should work:

find Linux/MinGW/Cygwin -name '*.c' -o -name '*.cpp' -o -name '*.h'

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answered Feb 14 '11 at 18:34

cYrus

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up vote2down vote

find -regex '.*/.*\.\(c\|cpp\|h\)$'

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answered Feb 14 '11 at 18:37

Dennis Williamson

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• What does the $ at the end of the command do? – Ali Aug 15 '17 at 3:16
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  @Ali: It anchors the regex to the end of the line (it prevents finding files named foo.cpp.old for example). – Dennis Williamson Aug 23 '17 at 13:12

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up vote1down vote

I would use:

find . -regex '.*\.\(c\|cpp\|h\)$' -print

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answered May 13 '11 at 15:49

rouble

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  In my macbook, the script without a -E can't find anything. you might need add a -E (as extended) to make it more portable, just like find -E . -regex '.*\.(c|h|cpp)' -print. ;-) – YanTing_ThePandaMay 1 '17 at 9:17

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up vote1down vote

Quick and dirty, and avoids directory names:

find . -type f -name *.[c\|h]

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answered Dec 17 '13 at 14:48

user282564

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  There are three problems with this command: 1. It won't find *.cpp files. 2. It will find *.| files. 3. The glob will expand if there are matching files in the current directory. Quoting prevents that. – Dennis Dec 17 '13 at 15:48

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up vote0down vote

I use a mac pro which also works in bash. But every time I type in the command line:

find -name

it says illegal option. So I just simplified it as:

find *.c *.cpp *.h

and found it really worked!

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edited Nov 4 '14 at 15:26

Excellll

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answered Nov 4 '14 at 14:55

Schawn

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up vote0down vote

You can use a slightly simpler regex:

find . -type f -regex ".*\.[ch]\(pp\)?$"