Bash bug?

[Jose]

Hi, I need help to get bash interpret correctly regular expressions.
In the shell I get:
--------------------
$ ls
A  b  C  d
$ ls [a-z]
A  b  C  d
$ ls [A-Z]
A  b  C  d
----------------------

But I think that this should be the correct output:

-----------------
$ ls [a-z]
b d
$ ls [A-Z]
A C
-------------------

Any Idea...

Thanks,
Jose         

[Jose]

Re: Bash bug?

O.K I answer myself.
This is taken from "[gnu.bash.bug] BASH Frequently-Asked Questions (FAQ version 3.26)":

E9) Why does the pattern matching expression [A-Z]* match files beginning
    with every letter except `z'?

Bash-2.03, Bash-2.05 and later versions honor the current locale setting
when processing ranges within pattern matching bracket expressions ([A-Z]).
This is what POSIX.2 and SUSv3/XPG6 specify.

The behavior of the matcher in bash-2.05 and later versions depends on the
current LC_COLLATE setting.  Setting this variable to `C' or `POSIX' will
result in the traditional behavior ([A-Z] matches all uppercase ASCII
characters).  Many other locales, including the en_US locale (the default
on many US versions of Linux) collate the upper and lower case letters like
this:

        AaBb...Zz

which means that [A-Z] matches every letter except `z'.  Others collate like

        aAbBcC...zZ

which means that [A-Z] matches every letter except `a'.

The portable way to specify upper case letters is [:upper:] instead of
A-Z; lower case may be specified as [:lower:] instead of a-z.

Look at the manual pages for setlocale(3), strcoll(3), and, if it is
present, locale(1).  If you have locale(1), you can use it to find
your current locale information even if you do not have any of the
LC_ variables set.

My advice is to put

        export LC_COLLATE=C

into /etc/profile and inspect any shell scripts run from cron for
constructs like [A-Z].  This will prevent things like

        rm [A-Z]*

from removing every file in the current directory except those beginning
with `z' and still allow individual users to change the collation order.
Users may put the above command into their own profiles as well, of course.

Best regards,
Jose