How to list directory contents including dotfiles but not . and ..?

Question

How do I get Dir['*'] to include dotfiles, e.g., .gitignore, but not . and ..?

I.e., is there a better way to do:

`ls -A`.split "\n"

perhaps with Dir? The following solutions are close but both include . & ..:

Dir.glob('*', File::FNM_DOTMATCH)
Dir['{.*,*}']

So, the following works:

Dir.glob('*', File::FNM_DOTMATCH) - ['.', '..']

But, is there still a better way to do this?

I'm wondering this to fix line 9 of a Meteor Homebrew Formula.

Immortalize

You've essentially edited your answer with the solution between me starting to answer and answering… :P – Ranjiv

What about Dir.glob(“{*,.*}”)? – Gambrell

@Gambrell cool. I just noticed that myself from reading the Dir::glob Ruby Documentation and added it to my question. It also includes the . & .. entries. – Immortalize

@AndrewMarshall ls -A excludes . & .. on OS X. Perhaps, you're thinking of ls -a? – Immortalize

@MattDiPasquale I have ls aliased to ls -aFh and didn't do \ls -A …whoops. Realized it after the fact though and deleted the (wrong) comment. – Ranjiv

Answer 1

You can't with Dir[], but you can with Dir.glob, which Dir[] calls:

Dir.glob("*", File::FNM_DOTMATCH)

You can get rid of the . & .. easily:

Dir.glob("*", File::FNM_DOTMATCH).tap { |a| a.shift(2) }

But I think it’s probably best to stick with your original way:

Dir.glob("*", File::FNM_DOTMATCH) - %w[. ..]

(among other ways)

However, if you don’t require a more sophisticated glob than *, Dir#children may be all you need (can always further filter/grep the results if more filtering is needed):

Dir.children('.')

Ranjiv

Better than tap... might be reject { |a| a =~ /^\.{1,2}$/ }, which is more informative and also does not depend upon the order of the directory entries. – Wyeth

@WayneConrad Yea I just did it quickly as the OP edited their question in rapid-fire mode. the best way is probably the array difference ... - %w[. ..]. The regex needed for the reject seems too dense for what is actually somewhat simple (not like my code was much clearer about the goal though :P) – Ranjiv

tap is a pretty cool method though. :) But, good point, I'll stick with array difference for now. Thanks. :) – Immortalize

@Matt - Oh, Array difference is way better than reject. – Wyeth

You can also reject !File.file?( x ) as a way to reject . and .. if you don't mind ignoring directories. – Example

Answer 2

Here's a shorter version:

Dir['{.[^\.]*,*}']

Clothesline

This wouldn't match a file such as ..foobar. – Beech

Why would you want to match ..foobar? .DOT files/folders are normal part of a file system listings (especially on linux/mac which use extFS), ..foobar would be an unlikely edgecase – Schumann

Answer 3

Here is how I did it to find all files in a directory including hidden files and remove .git/, ., .., and directories:

      files = Dir.glob("#{ARGV.first}/**/*", File::FNM_DOTMATCH)
      files = files.grep_v(/\/.git\//).grep_v(/\/\.$/).grep_v(/\/\.\.$/)
      files = files.select { |file| File.file?(file) }

Pasteurization