I have a file called messages.boot in my home folder which is matched by this:

find . -regex .*messages\.boot

but not by this:

find . -regex .*mes\{2\}ages\.boot


In the manual it says the default type of regular expressions is emacs which uses \{n\} to specify the number of times the preceding character should appear so I don't see why that won't work.

BTW I know i can specify what type of regex i want to use in the find command, but i'd rather save the extra typing and use the default most of the time.