ls [brackets] question

[techsurfer]

Any ideas as to why the CMD: "ls file[1-13]" ??

only lists "file1, file3" but won't list "file2 or file13"

What would be the correct syntax using brackets and hyphen to list all four files if you have:

file1
file2
file3
file13

??

Thanks for your help.

[hazel]

Characters inside square brackets are treated as pure characters, not numbers. So [1-9] would match any of those nine digits, but ["13"] just means "either a 1 or a 3". So file2 does not display under these conditions.

Using braces rather than brackets allows more variation. So for example ls file{1,2,3,10} would display file1, file2, file3 and file10. But I don't think you can use a range in this type of syntax.