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1.3     ! uwe         1: .\" $NetBSD: glob.7,v 1.2 2011/01/19 00:21:19 uwe Exp $
1.1       jruoho      2: .\"
                      3: .\"    $OpenBSD: glob.7,v 1.3 2009/12/26 15:24:54 schwarze Exp $
                      4: .\"
                      5: .\" Copyright (c) 2009 Todd C. Miller <Todd.Miller@courtesan.com>
                      6: .\"
                      7: .\" Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any
                      8: .\" purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above
                      9: .\" copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.
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                     11: .\" THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES
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                     19: .Dd November 30, 2010
                     20: .Dt GLOB 7
                     21: .Os
                     22: .Sh NAME
                     23: .Nm glob
                     24: .Nd shell-style pattern matching
                     25: .Sh DESCRIPTION
                     26: Globbing characters
                     27: .Pq wildcards
                     28: are special characters used to perform pattern matching of pathnames and
                     29: command arguments in the
                     30: .Xr csh 1 ,
                     31: .Xr ksh 1 ,
                     32: and
                     33: .Xr sh 1
                     34: shells as well as
                     35: the C library functions
                     36: .Xr fnmatch 3
                     37: and
                     38: .Xr glob 3 .
                     39: A glob pattern is a word containing one or more unquoted
                     40: .Ql \&?
                     41: or
                     42: .Ql *
                     43: characters, or
1.3     ! uwe        44: .Dq Li [..]
1.1       jruoho     45: sequences.
                     46: .Pp
                     47: Globs should not be confused with the more powerful
                     48: regular expressions used by programs such as
                     49: .Xr grep 1 .
                     50: While there is some overlap in the special characters used in regular
                     51: expressions and globs, their meaning is different.
                     52: .Pp
                     53: The pattern elements have the following meaning:
                     54: .Bl -tag -width Ds
1.3     ! uwe        55: .It Li \&?
1.1       jruoho     56: Matches any single character.
1.3     ! uwe        57: .It Li \&*
1.1       jruoho     58: Matches any sequence of zero or more characters.
1.3     ! uwe        59: .It Li [..]
1.1       jruoho     60: Matches any of the characters inside the brackets.
                     61: Ranges of characters can be specified by separating two characters by a
1.3     ! uwe        62: .Ql \-
1.1       jruoho     63: (e.g.\&
1.3     ! uwe        64: .Dq Li [a0-9]
1.1       jruoho     65: matches the letter
                     66: .Sq a
                     67: or any digit).
                     68: In order to represent itself, a
1.3     ! uwe        69: .Ql \-
1.1       jruoho     70: must either be quoted or the first or last character in the character list.
                     71: Similarly, a
                     72: .Ql \&]
                     73: must be quoted or the first character in the list if it is to represent itself
                     74: instead of the end of the list.
                     75: Also, a
                     76: .Ql \&!
                     77: appearing at the start of the list has special meaning (see below), so to
                     78: represent itself it must be quoted or appear later in the list.
                     79: .Pp
                     80: Within a bracket expression, the name of a
                     81: .Em character class
                     82: enclosed in
1.3     ! uwe        83: .Ql [:
1.1       jruoho     84: and
1.3     ! uwe        85: .Ql :]
1.1       jruoho     86: stands for the list of all characters belonging to that class.
                     87: Supported character classes:
1.2       uwe        88: .Bl -column ".Li xdigit" ".Li xdigit" ".Li xdigit" -offset indent
                     89: .It Li "alnum" Ta Li "cntrl" Ta Li "lower" Ta Li "space"
                     90: .It Li "alpha" Ta Li "digit" Ta Li "print" Ta Li "upper"
                     91: .It Li "blank" Ta Li "graph" Ta Li "punct" Ta Li "xdigit"
1.1       jruoho     92: .El
                     93: .Pp
                     94: These match characters using the macros specified in
                     95: .Xr ctype 3 .
                     96: A character class may not be used as an endpoint of a range.
1.3     ! uwe        97: .It Li [!..]
        !            98: Like
        !            99: .Li [..] ,
1.1       jruoho    100: except it matches any character not inside the brackets.
1.3     ! uwe       101: .It Li \e
1.1       jruoho    102: Matches the character following it verbatim.
                    103: This is useful to quote the special characters
                    104: .Ql \&? ,
                    105: .Ql \&* ,
                    106: .Ql \&[ ,
                    107: and
                    108: .Ql \e
                    109: such that they lose their special meaning.
                    110: For example, the pattern
1.3     ! uwe       111: .Dq Li \e\e\e\&*\e[x]\e\&?
1.1       jruoho    112: matches the string
                    113: .Dq \e\&*[x]\&? .
                    114: .El
                    115: .Pp
                    116: Note that when matching a pathname, the path separator
                    117: .Ql / ,
                    118: is not matched by a
                    119: .Ql \&? ,
                    120: or
                    121: .Ql * ,
                    122: character or by a
1.3     ! uwe       123: .Dq Li [..]
1.1       jruoho    124: sequence.
                    125: Thus,
                    126: .Pa /usr/*/*/X11
                    127: would match
                    128: .Pa /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
                    129: and
                    130: .Pa /usr/X11R6/include/X11
                    131: while
                    132: .Pa /usr/*/X11
                    133: would not match either.
                    134: Likewise,
                    135: .Pa /usr/*/bin
                    136: would match
                    137: .Pa /usr/local/bin
                    138: but not
                    139: .Pa /usr/bin .
                    140: .Sh SEE ALSO
                    141: .Xr fnmatch 3 ,
                    142: .Xr glob 3 ,
                    143: .Xr re_format 7
                    144: .Sh HISTORY
                    145: In early versions of
                    146: .Ux ,
                    147: the shell did not do pattern expansion itself.
                    148: A dedicated program,
                    149: .Pa /etc/glob ,
                    150: was used to perform the expansion and pass the results to a command.
                    151: In
                    152: .At v7 ,
                    153: with the introduction of the Bourne shell,
                    154: this functionality was incorporated into the shell itself.