Doc/lib/libfnmatch.tex

   1 \section{\module{fnmatch} ---
   2          \UNIX{} filename pattern matching}
   3
   4 \declaremodule{standard}{fnmatch}
   5 \modulesynopsis{\UNIX{} shell style filename pattern matching.}
   6
   7
   8 This module provides support for \UNIX{} shell-style wildcards, which
   9 are \emph{not} the same as regular expressions (which are documented
  10 in the \refmodule{re}\refstmodindex{re} module).  The special
  11 characters used in shell-style wildcards are:
  12 \index{filenames!wildcard expansion}
  13
  14 \begin{list}{}{\leftmargin 0.5in \labelwidth 0.45in}
  15 \item[\code{*}] matches everything
  16 \item[\code{?}] matches any single character
  17 \item[\code{[}\var{seq}\code{]}] matches any character in \var{seq}
  18 \item[\code{[!}\var{seq}\code{]}] matches any character not in \var{seq}
  19 \end{list}
  20
  21 Note that the filename separator (\code{'/'} on \UNIX{}) is \emph{not}
  22 special to this module.  See module
  23 \refmodule{glob}\refstmodindex{glob} for pathname expansion
  24 (\refmodule{glob} uses \function{fnmatch()} to match filename
  25 segments).
  26
  27
  28 \begin{funcdesc}{fnmatch}{filename, pattern}
  29 Test whether the \var{filename} string matches the \var{pattern}
  30 string, returning true or false.  If the operating system is
  31 case-insensitive, then both parameters will be normalized to all
  32 lower- or upper-case before the comparision is performed.  If you
  33 require a case-sensitive comparision regardless of whether that's
  34 standard for your operating system, use \function{fnmatchcase()}
  35 instead.
  36 \end{funcdesc}
  37
  38 \begin{funcdesc}{fnmatchcase}{filename, pattern}
  39 Test whether \var{filename} matches \var{pattern}, returning true or
  40 false; the comparision is case-sensitive.
  41 \end{funcdesc}
  42
  43
  44 \begin{seealso}
  45   \seemodule{glob}{Shell-style path expansion}
  46 \end{seealso}