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docker ps --filter name needs leading slash for exact match

context

Querying for a specific Docker container by exact name from a shell script.

thoughts

docker ps --filter name=foo does substring matching by default — it matches foo, foo-backup, my-foo, etc. The name filter actually takes a Go regex applied against Docker's internal name format, which prefixes names with a /. So to look up exactly the container named foo, you need --filter name=^/foo\$ (anchors with the leading slash). Without that anchor, an auto-detect script that asks 'is container X running?' returns false positives whenever any other container's name contains X.

next time

When scripting against docker ps --filter name=, always anchor with ^/...$ for exact matches; substring matching is the default and bites silently.

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