How to use wildcards in remote directory with sftp

[carolus]

This does what I want, opening the remote directory:

$ sftp dell03:junk
Connected to dell03.
Changing to: /Users/cdr/junk

With wildcards it doesn't work; the remote directory is not recognized
as a directory:

$ sftp dell03:"ju*"
Connected to dell03.
Fetching /Users/cdr/junk/ to junk
Cannot download non-regular file: /Users/cdr/junk/

I've tried various quoting methods, and tried terminating the directory
name with /, but nothing worked.

So I connect without wildcard. Then I can use a wildcard here:
sftp> ls ju*
junk/backhd_asus10 junk/deb7xfce20140704 junk/to_bigdrive

but not here:
sftp> cd ju*
Couldn't canonicalize: No such file or directory

The only workaround I've found to avoid typing a long pathname in full
is to save it in an environment variable. Is there a better way?

[Kees Nuyt]

On Fri, 11 Jul 2014 17:50:22 -0500, carolus
<sendme...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>This does what I want, opening the remote directory:
>
>$ sftp dell03:junk
>Connected to dell03.
>Changing to: /Users/cdr/junk
>
>With wildcards it doesn't work; the remote directory is not recognized
>as a directory:
>
>$ sftp dell03:"ju*"
>Connected to dell03.
>Fetching /Users/cdr/junk/ to junk
>Cannot download non-regular file: /Users/cdr/junk/
>
>I've tried various quoting methods, and tried terminating the directory
>name with /, but nothing worked.
>
>So I connect without wildcard. Then I can use a wildcard here:
>sftp> ls ju*
>junk/backhd_asus10 junk/deb7xfce20140704 junk/to_bigdrive
>
>but not here:
>sftp> cd ju*
>Couldn't canonicalize: No such file or directory

That makes sense, because you can not change to more than one
directory at a time.

>The only workaround I've found to avoid typing a long pathname in full
>is to save it in an environment variable. Is there a better way?

Script it in shell with scp, rather than use sftp.
As a bonus, scp can do a bit more with wildcards.
--
Kees Nuyt

[carolus]

On 7/12/2014 7:35 AM, Kees Nuyt wrote:

>> So I connect without wildcard. Then I can use a wildcard here:
>> sftp> ls ju*
>> junk/backhd_asus10 junk/deb7xfce20140704 junk/to_bigdrive
>>
>> but not here:
>> sftp> cd ju*
>> Couldn't canonicalize: No such file or directory
>
> That makes sense, because you can not change to more than one
> directory at a time.

This doesn't work either:

sftp> cd ju*/

Couldn't canonicalize: No such file or directory

>

> Script it in shell with scp, rather than use sftp.
> As a bonus, scp can do a bit more with wildcards.

Then the choice is between 1) more scripts than I can keep track of or
2) re-editing a single script, with the same problem of typing long
pathnames, and more steps than an interactive method. I don't see an
advantage over using environment variables as shortcut names for
frequently used directories on the remote machine.

[carolus]

On 7/12/2014 12:49 PM, Michael Vilain wrote:

> If you can get a listing of the remote files, then you can dump that
> list to a file or variable and iterate through it with a "for" loop.
> This assumes you can scp or sftp without entering a password.
>

For file names, sftp seems to handle wildcards OK, just not directory
names. The problem is navigating the directory tree. If I try to find
my way around the remote directory in sftp by alternating ls and cd, as
I would on the local system (or remotely using ssh), I can't cd without
having to type every letter with no mistakes. So I hunt first for the
target directory with ssh where I can use wildcards, then save the path
to TARGET, and then "sftp $TARGET". To switch targets, I find it easier
to exit and restart sftp than to navigate the remote directory tree
without the help of wildcards.

I just thought there might be an smarter way - some way of quoting, for
example.