DIR filenames that contain extensions

Question

I was just trying to check a dump-directory for any ZIP programs like PeaZip, NanoZip, etc. and ran into an odd problem that I have seen only a few times before.

I used the following command to list files whose filenames contain zip (e.g., nanozip.zip, peazip2.rar, winzip-beta.exe, etc.):

dir *zip*

This listed any files whose filenames contain zip, but also all files with a .zip extension (e.g., foobar.zip).

I then tried the following:

dir *zip*.*

This gave the same results.

Does anyone know of a way to get the expected results? (I know that for may be able to do it, but the output won’t be correct.)

Answer 1

Problem

Listing all files that have zip in the basename (before the last dot, if any) is tricky because of two reasons:

• Windows only has two wildcards: * and ?.

  * matches any number of characters (including zero).

  ? matches exactly one character (except for the dot), unless it's the last character of the pattern, followed by a dot, only other wildcards or only other wildcards and then a dot.¹

• There are no actual extension in long filenames. The GUI might treat everything that follows the last dot as the file's extension, but that's just a convention.

  To make matters worse, . has a special meaning on the command prompt. Before LFN, every file had an extension (although it could be empty). Therefore, *.* matched all files, while * matched only files with an empty extension.

  To maintain some backward compatibility, . is ignored if it's followed only by wildcards and other dots, except if the dots are adjacent and followed by at least one wildcard or if there's no wildcard at all and at most a single asterisk before the dot.¹

Examples:

• foo?.bar will match the file foo.bar, but foo?bar won't match neither foobar nor foo.bar.

• *, *.*, *.*., *.*.* and **. will match all files in any given folder, while *., *.. and *..* won't.

Workaround

Unless you're using the archive bit to perform incremental backups², there's a way to display the files you're interested in (and only those), using only DIR and the ATTRIB command.

Steps:

1. First, set the archive bit on all files that contain zip anywhere in their respective filenames:

    ATTRIB +A *zip*
   

2. Now, unset the archive bit on all files with a zip extension:

    ATTRIB -A *.zip
   

   If you want to exclude files whose respective extensions end with zip as well (e.g., ezip), use the following command instead:

    ATTRIB -A *.*zip
   

   Since *.*zip will get tested against the 8.3 filenames as well, this will also match files whose respective extensions begin with zip (e.g., zipx), unless the 8.3 filenames aren't present or have been altered.

3. Since the previous command unset the archive bit on files like nanozip.zip, reset those:

    ATTRIB +A *zip*.*zip
   

4. Now, you can use the /AA switch of the DIR command to show only files with a set archive bit:

    DIR /AA *zip*
   

With the /S switch on DIR and the /S [/D] switch on ATTRIB, this even works for files in subdirectories.

---

¹ This is intended as a list of quirks, rather than an exhaustive explanation of wildcard behavior.

² Windows XP's NTBackup, e.g., respects the archive bit.

Answer 2

Not a nice one, but working one..

dir | findstr ini..*

dots are used as regular expression, means any character and * from 0 to infinite times

Only downside is that it doesn't mach files withou extension.

Answer 3

If you're willing to "eyeball" then use

dir /OE *zip*

which will sort the output by extension and can visually ignore those with a .zip extension - they will be all grouped together.

For a list you can examine, massage, etc. send the output to file:

dir /OE *zip* > myzip.txt

Answer 4

Try:

dir * | findstr /i zip.*\.

leave out the /i if you want a case sensitive search

Answer 5

Similar to week's solution above:

dir | findstr /e zip.*.[a-z]* 

This should find anything that contains "zip", followed by any number of characters, followed by a "." and any number of letters, followed by the end of the filename. Did I miss anything else?

Answer 6

For testing, these are some valid file names I used (i.e. those having "zip" somewhere in the filename, with extension not mattering):

zip
has zip
has zip text
zip.doc
textzip.txt
File.zip.txt
File - zip text.zip
this file name haszipin it.txt

Invalid file names:

noname
File.xzip
File.zipx
File.azipx
File.bxzip
File name.zip

Given all the above, and a lack of support for both the "|" (or) and "+" (one or more) in findstr, I believe what you're looking for cannot be done using out of the box Windows utils only. Also, while the other dir output lines such as those containing "volume" or "directory" or "bytes" can be included, using find or findstr to filter the output of dir automatically means that the matching file and directory count will be incorrect (it will show the files and directories dir originally found, not the ones finally displayed after filtering). The total matching file size will naturally be incorrect as well for the same reason, although the bytes free will be correct as that does not depend on the results returned.

This might be possible using a convoluted batch or PowerShell script, but really, at that point you might as well code your own program in C or similar.

Answer 7

This batch file should work for you.

If you run it with no command line arguments it will give a listing like:

"dir *zip*.*"

but it will filter out files that do not contain "zip" in the "name" portion of the filename (ignores the extension). I assumed that a filename that contains "zip" in the name AND extension is a valid match, like:

somezipfile.zip

If you run it with an argument (like txt or "txt" or "any text") it will do the same except using the specified argument instead of "zip".

This batch file will also display the correct file count and file size summary.

Please let me know if it is not doing what you need.

@echo off



set "zfind=%~1"
if "%zfind%."=="." set "zfind=zip"

set "zpattern=*%zfind%*.*"
set "zhold="
set zcount=0
set zgotbslash=0



for %%f in ("%zpattern%") do call :work1 "%%~nf" "%%~xf"



if NOT %zcount% EQU 0 goto :start2

rem no matches. look for something that "for sure" won't be found.
set zhold="<[nothing]>"
goto start2



:start2
set "zrandom=%random%.%random%.%random%.%random%.tmp"
if exist "%zrandom%" del "%zrandom%" >nul 2>&1
dir %zhold%>>"%zrandom%" 2>>&1



for /f "usebackq delims=" %%f in ("%zrandom%") do call :work2 "%%~f"



echo.
if exist "%zrandom%" del "%zrandom%" >nul 2>&1
goto :cleanexit



:work1

set "znam=%~1"
set "zext=%~2"



for /f "usebackq delims=" %%g in (`echo set "ztest=%%znam:%zfind%=%%"`) do %%g



rem if "%ztest%" equals "%znam%" then 
rem file "name" did NOT contain the search text.. skip it

if "%ztest%."=="%znam%." goto :work1skip
goto :work1match



:work1match
rem got a match

set zhold=%zhold% "%znam%%zext%"
set /A zcount=zcount+1
goto :EOF



:work1skip
rem skip this one

goto :EOF



:work2

set "zline=%~1"

rem if we already printed the " Directory of d:..." line then:
if %zgotbslash% EQU 1 goto :work2part2

rem looking for "\"
call :testbslash
if %zres% EQU 1 goto :work2gotbslash


echo %zline%
goto :EOF



:work2gotbslash
set zgotbslash=1
echo.
echo %zline%
echo.
goto :EOF



:work2part2
call :testbslash
if %zres% EQU 0 echo %zline%
goto :EOF



:testbslash
set zres=1
set "ztest=%zline:\=%"
if "%ztest%."=="%zline%." set zres=0
goto :EOF




:cleanexit

set "zcount="
set "zext="
set "zfind="
set "zgotbslash="
set "zhold="
set "zline="
set "znam="
set "zpattern="
set "zrandom="
set "zres="
set "ztest="
goto :EOF

Answer 8

There's no good reason to use cmd.exe these days. PowerShell:

dir | ? {$_.BaseName.Contains('zip')}