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→Regular Expressions vs. Filename Expansion
===Regular Expressions vs. Filename Expansion===
<table align="right"><tr valign="top"><td>[[Image:directory-structure-5.png|thumb|right|250px|Output of the '''tree''' command to display directory structure.]]</td><td>[[Image:directory-structure-6.png|thumb|right|250px|Output of the '''ls -lR''' command to display directory structure.]]</td></table>In a previous lesson, you learned that filename expansion symbols allow the Linux shell to expand filenames as arguments (referred to as “globbing”) for file management commands. This is very useful for managing multiple files sharing similar characteristics such as the same file extension.
Regular expressions are used to search, edit and manipulate text and are used with Linux file management commands such as '''ls''', '''rm''', '''mv''', '''cp''', '''cat''', '''less''' and '''more'''. This can represent text contained in files or text as a result of issuing Linux commands using a pipeline.