Copy all file names that match regexp

Question

In a dired buffer of a directory, how do I copy the file names of all files matching [tT]ypolog[yi]?

Getting them from an elisp list format, \n separated format or otherwise into a python list format will be trivial, so the precise content of the kill ring matters little.

Answer 1

Use function directory-files, for which C-h f tells you:

directory-files is a built-in function in `C source code'.

(directory-files DIRECTORY &optional FULL MATCH NOSORT)

Return a list of names of files in DIRECTORY.
There are three optional arguments:
If FULL is non-nil, return absolute file names.  Otherwise return names
 that are relative to the specified directory.
If MATCH is non-nil, mention only file names that match the regexp MATCH.
If NOSORT is non-nil, the list is not sorted--its order is unpredictable.
 Otherwise, the list returned is sorted with `string-lessp'.
 NOSORT is useful if you plan to sort the result yourself.

In this case, you provide your regexp as argument MATCH:

M-: (directory-files default-directory nil "[tT]ypolog[yi]")

And you need not be in a Dired buffer to use this.

Answer 2

If you use counsel-find-file from the counsel MELPA package, you can press M-w to copy all current matches. It works with regex patterns as input. Then press C-g if you don't wont to select a file afterwards.

Answer 3

You can mark all files whose names match a regular expression using dired-mark-files-regexp, and then copy them to the kill ring them (see this answer) using dired-copy-filename-as-kill.

Unfortunately, this does not result in a list that is in any way nicely separated, because the file names are just concatenated using by , so if your file names may contain spaces, you get a mess.

Answer 4

you could use a shell command to list the directory (ls -1), then use keep-lines to delete the lines that do not match your regex. the buffer then contains just the file names that you want, one per line.