glob (programming)
In computer programming, in particular in a Unix-like environment, glob patterns specify sets of filenames with wildcard characters. For example, the Unix command mv *.txt textfiles/
moves (mv
) all files with names ending in .txt
from the current directory to the directory textfiles
. Here, *
is a wildcard standing for "any string of characters" and *.txt
is a glob pattern. The other common wildcard is the question mark (?
), which stands for one character.
Origin
The command interpreters of the early versions of Unix (1st through 6th Editions, 1969–75) relied on a separate program to expand wildcard characters in unquoted arguments to a command: /etc/glob.[1] That program performed the expansion and supplied the expanded list of file paths to the command for execution. Its name is an abbreviation for "global command".[2] Later, this functionality was provided as a library function, glob(), used by programs such as the shell.
Syntax
The most common wildcards are
, *
, and ?
.[...]
Wildcard | Description | Example | Matches | Does not match |
---|---|---|---|---|
|
matches any number of any characters including none |
|
, , or
|
|
|
, , or . |
|||
|
matches any single character |
|
, , or
|
|
|
matches one character given in the bracket |
|
or
|
or
|
|
matches one character from the range given in the bracket |
|
, etc. |
or
|
In all cases the path separator character (
on unix or /
on windows) will never be matched.\
Unix
On Linux and POSIX systems
, *
is defined as above while ?
has two additional meanings:[3][4][...]
Wildcard | Description | Example | Matches | Does not match |
---|---|---|---|---|
|
matches one character that is not given in the bracket |
|
, , or
|
|
|
matches one character that is not from the range given in the bracket |
|
, etc. |
, or
|
Some shells (such as the C shell and Bash) support additional syntax known as alternation or brace expansion.
The Bash shell also supports Extended Globbing which allows other pattern matching operators to be used to match multiple occurrences of a pattern enclosed in parentheses. It can be enabled by setting the
shell option.[5]extglob
Windows PowerShell
Windows PowerShell has all the common syntax defined as stated above without any additions.[6]
DOS COMMAND.COM and Windows cmd.exe
COMMAND.COM and cmd.exe have most of the common syntax with some limitations: There is no
and the [...]
may only appear at the end of the pattern, not at the beginning.*
SQL
The SQL LIKE operator has an equivalent of
and ?
. There is no equivalent of *
.[...]
Common wildcard | SQL wildcard |
---|---|
|
|
|
|
Standard SQL uses a glob-like syntax for simple string matching in its LIKE
operator. The percent sign (%) matches zero or more characters, and the underscore matches exactly one character. The term "glob" is not generally used in the SQL community, however. Many implementations of SQL have extended the LIKE
operator to allow a richer pattern-matching language incorporating elements of regular expressions.
Some proprietary extensions such as Transact-SQL provide the
functionality, e.g., [...]
[characters]
and [^characters]
.[7]
Compared to regular expressions
Globs do not include syntax for the Kleene star which allows multiple repetitions of the preceding part of the expression; thus they are not considered regular expressions, which can describe the full set of regular languages over any given finite alphabet.
Common wildcard | Equivalent regular expression[8] |
---|---|
|
|
|
|
Globs attempt to match the entire string (for example,
matches S.DOC and SA.DOC, but not POST.DOC or SURREY.DOCKS), whereas regular expressions match a substring unless the expression is enclosed with S*.DOC
and ^
(so the equivalent of $
is S*.DOC
[8]).^S.*\.DOC$
Implementations
Unix shells such as Bash, tcsh, and zsh provide globbing on filenames at the command line and in shell scripts.[9]
The Windows command interpreter cmd.exe relies on a runtime function in applications to perform globbing.[10][11] Windows PowerShell Cmdlets support globbing.[12]
The term "glob" is also used to refer more generally to limited pattern-matching facilities of this kind, in other contexts:
- D has a
globMatch
function in thestd.path
module.[13] - Go has a
Glob
function in thefilepath
package.[14] - Java has a
Files
class containing methods that operate on glob patterns.[15] - Haskell has a
Glob
package with the main moduleSystem.FilePath.Glob
. The pattern syntax is based on a subset of Zsh’s. It tries to optimize the given pattern and should be noticeably faster than a naïve character-by-character matcher.[16] - Perl has both a
glob
function (as discussed in Larry Wall's book Programming Perl) and a Glob extension which mimics the BSD glob routine.[17] Perl's angle brackets can be used to glob as well:<*.log>
. - PHP has a
glob
function.[18] - Python has a
glob
module in the standard library which performs wildcard pattern matching on filenames,[19] and anfnmatch
module with functions for matching strings or filtering lists based on these same wildcard patterns [20] Guido van Rossum, author of the Python programming language, wrote and contributed aglob
routine to BSD Unix in 1986.[21] There were previous implementations ofglob
, e.g., in the ex and ftp programs in previous releases of BSD. - Ruby has a
glob
method for theDir
class which performs wildcard pattern matching on filenames.[22] Several libraries such as Rant and Rake provide aFileList
class which has a glob method or use the methodFileList.[]
identically. - SQLite has a
GLOB
function. - Tcl contains both true regular expression matching facilities and a more limited kind of pattern matching often described as globbing.[23]
See also
References
- ↑ "First Edition Unix manual 'Miscellaneous' section (PDF)" (PDF). Retrieved 2011-05-11.
- ↑ 1st Edition UNIX, code.google.com, src/cmd/glob.c
- ↑ "The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7 IEEE Std 1003.1, 2013 Edition, 2.13. Pattern Matching Notation".
- ↑ "Linux Programmer's Manual, GLOB(7)".
- ↑ "Pattern Matching". Bash Reference Manual.
- ↑ "Supporting Wildcard Characters in Cmdlet Parameters".
- ↑ "LIKE (Transact-SQL)".
- 1 2 Strictly,
does not match a newline. To match newlines, the equivalents are.
and[\s\S]
or similar complementary pairs, respectively.[\s\S]*
- ↑ The "Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide, Chapter 19.2: Globbing" (Mendel Cooper, 2003) has a concise set of examples of filename globbing patterns.
- ↑ "Wildcard Expansion". Microsoft Developer Network. 2013.
- ↑ "Expanding Wildcard Arguments". Microsoft Developer Network. 2013.
- ↑ "Supporting Wildcard Characters in Cmdlet Parameters". Microsoft Developer Network. 2013.
- ↑ "std.path - D Programming Language - Digital Mars". dlang.org. Retrieved 2014-09-08.
- ↑ "Package filepath - The Go Programming Language". Golang.org. Retrieved 2011-05-11.
- ↑ "File Operations". Oracle. Retrieved 2013-12-16.
- ↑ "Glob-0.7.4: Globbing library". Retrieved 2014-05-07.
- ↑ Contact details. "File::Glob - Perl extension for BSD glob routine". perldoc.perl.org. Retrieved 2011-05-11.
- ↑ "glob - Manual". PHP. 2011-05-06. Retrieved 2011-05-11.
- ↑ "10.7. glob — Unix style pathname pattern expansion — Python v2.7.1 documentation". Docs.python.org. Retrieved 2011-05-11.
- ↑ "10.8 fnmatch Unix filename pattern matching -- Python v2.7.7 documentation". Docs.python.org. Retrieved 2014-06-28.
- ↑ "'Globbing' library routine". Archived from the original on 2007-12-19. Retrieved 2011-05-11.
- ↑ "Class: Dir". Ruby-doc.org. Retrieved 2011-05-11.
- ↑ "TCL glob manual page". Retrieved 16 November 2011.