Using . as regular expresion for finding some pattern

[anon10087]

Sir,

In section 10.3 it is shown that, . matches single character except dot itself.
But when i try this commnad in lab it matches the whole character .
when i execute the command ls -l | grep .bz2 it matches exactly bz2 and show output.
Question will be more clear by my attachment.

Thanks
Anon10087

[anup]

Anon10087,

Good question as to why the '.' is matching a .bz2? You should try to put in more files there like cbz2, dbz2 etc. and then you will notice that it matches even these files. The reason is that a '.' will also match the NULL or empty character, which is what is happening in this case.

Thanks,

Anup