list_files_within_a_specific_range []

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==== list files within a specific range ====
In bash, we can use a ''sequence expression'' to list files within a specific range. For example
<code>
$ echo file{18..21}.txt
file18.txt file19.txt file20.txt file21.txt
</code>

The sequence expression takes the form ''{x..y[..incr]}'', where x and y are either integers or single characters, and incr, an optional increment, is an integer. It is part of Bash's brace expansion feature.

Ref:
  * https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Brace-Expansion.html - documentation on Bash's brace expansion feature.
  * https://superuser.com/questions/236484/list-files-numbered-in-a-specific-range - where I came across the above snippet. Dennis Williamson's reply is pretty comprehensive; provides alternatives solutions; addresses corner cases; high information density. It is worth reading it end to end.

Possible use cases:

  * To list files <code>
ls file{18..21}.txt
</code>

  * Use a for loop to run a command on each of them <code>
for file in file{18..21}.txt
...
</code>

tags | list file names with a range