bash globbing (globstar) pattern errors if top level directory empty with "No such file or directory"

Question

I have a folder structure as such:

a/
  b/
    test.js
  c/
    another_test.js

When I want to find all these files, I tried the globstar approach:

ls a/{,**/}*.js

However, this command errors (but still outputs files) because there is no a/*.jsx file:

$ ls a/{,**/}*.jsx
    ls: a/*.jsx: No such file or directory
    a/b/test.js

I want to use this specific glob because in the future, at some point, a/test.js could exist.

Is there a glob pattern that will find all .js files in a/ recursively and not error?

I looked at some of the options in this question but couldn't find anything that doesn't error and lists all files.

it does if you have globstar enabled, otherwise `**` is only `*` — izabera, May 06 '15 at 23:17
Hmm, osx doesn't have a `globstar` option, at least not with the bash it ships with. — Andy Ray, May 06 '15 at 23:20
I still think that's the proper term, and it's inherently on in osx bash? — Andy Ray, May 06 '15 at 23:27
it's *not* on because it's an option that was introduced in a later version — izabera, May 06 '15 at 23:28

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered May 06 '15 at 23:23

2

With bash4 and above, just use:
ls dir/**/*.js

With previous bash versions, such as 3.2 shipped with osx, you can use find:
find dir -name '*.js'

answered May 06 '15 at 23:23

izabera

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 07 '22 at 21:03

Given:

% tree .
.
└── a
    ├── b
    │   └── test.js
    └── c
        └── another_test.js

You can use the pattern a/**/*.js on either zsh or Bash4+ with shopt -s globstar set:

zsh:

% ls -1 a/**/*.js
a/b/test.js
a/c/another_test.js

Bash 5.1:

$ ls -1 a/**/*.js
a/b/test.js
a/c/another_test.js

2 Answers2