grep regular expression help

[CaptainB]

I haven't used grep or regular expressions before.
I need to find all files (in the /etc directory) that have two extensions, so I need to search for: anything.anything.anything
Here's the command I've pieced together with a little help from Google: ls /etc | grep -e "*\.*\.*"
I've been tweaking it a little bit but it always gives me zero results.

All hints, nudges, and explanations are appreciated.

[ekj]

In this particular case you don't need regular expressions at all. The easiest solution would be:

ls /etc/*.*.*

[anomie]

If you really do require regular expressions for some reason, you were pretty close. Try with the expression '.*\..*\..*'

Example:

[hector@troy ~]$ ls /var/log | grep '.*\..*\..*'
boot.log.1
boot.log.2
boot.log.3
boot.log.4
Xorg.0.log

Make sure to use single quotes (not double quotes). You don't want those asterisks to expand on the command line.