[CJefferson]

But, I need to remember to do that.

How about (for example):

    $ for i in $(ls | grep 'cheese\|fish' | head -n 5) ...

I'm sure there is a way to make this work correctly (take 5 filenames containing either cheese or fish), but I'd need to put more thought into making it work correctly.

[kps]

  ls | grep 'cheese\|fish' | head -n 5 | while read -r i …

[Symbiote]

With Zsh:

  > touch {dark\ red,green,light\ blue}{cheese,fish\ fingers,fruit}
  > ls -1 *(cheese|fish)*([1,5])
  dark redcheese
  dark redfish fingers
  greencheese
  greenfish fingers
  light bluecheese
  > for i in *(cheese|fish)*([1,5]) ...

Since that's shell globbing, it can cope with any spaces, newlines etc.

[CJefferson]

Wow, that is quite impressive, I might have to look into this more. The advantage of using head is I only have to learn it once, to get the first n of lines or files, but it might be worth learning. Thanks.

[Symbiote]

I know 25% of the special Zsh syntax, and know of a further 25% of what exists.

I read the whole manpage some years ago, and noted down what seemed useful. I use "man zshexpn" when I forget the syntax for things like this.