1.\" $NetBSD: glob.7,v 1.3 2011/01/19 00:33:10 uwe Exp $ 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. 10.\" 11.\" THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES 12.\" WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF 13.\" MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR 14.\" ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES 15.\" WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN 16.\" ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF 17.\" OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE. 18.\" 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 26Globbing characters 27.Pq wildcards 28are special characters used to perform pattern matching of pathnames and 29command arguments in the 30.Xr csh 1 , 31.Xr ksh 1 , 32and 33.Xr sh 1 34shells as well as 35the C library functions 36.Xr fnmatch 3 37and 38.Xr glob 3 . 39A glob pattern is a word containing one or more unquoted 40.Ql \&? 41or 42.Ql * 43characters, or 44.Dq Li [..] 45sequences. 46.Pp 47Globs should not be confused with the more powerful 48regular expressions used by programs such as 49.Xr grep 1 . 50While there is some overlap in the special characters used in regular 51expressions and globs, their meaning is different. 52.Pp 53The pattern elements have the following meaning: 54.Bl -tag -width Ds 55.It Li \&? 56Matches any single character. 57.It Li \&* 58Matches any sequence of zero or more characters. 59.It Li [..] 60Matches any of the characters inside the brackets. 61Ranges of characters can be specified by separating two characters by a 62.Ql \- 63(e.g.\& 64.Dq Li [a0-9] 65matches the letter 66.Sq a 67or any digit). 68In order to represent itself, a 69.Ql \- 70must either be quoted or the first or last character in the character list. 71Similarly, a 72.Ql \&] 73must be quoted or the first character in the list if it is to represent itself 74instead of the end of the list. 75Also, a 76.Ql \&! 77appearing at the start of the list has special meaning (see below), so to 78represent itself it must be quoted or appear later in the list. 79.Pp 80Within a bracket expression, the name of a 81.Em character class 82enclosed in 83.Ql [: 84and 85.Ql :] 86stands for the list of all characters belonging to that class. 87Supported character classes: 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" 92.El 93.Pp 94These match characters using the macros specified in 95.Xr ctype 3 . 96A character class may not be used as an endpoint of a range. 97.It Li [!..] 98Like 99.Li [..] , 100except it matches any character not inside the brackets. 101.It Li \e 102Matches the character following it verbatim. 103This is useful to quote the special characters 104.Ql \&? , 105.Ql \&* , 106.Ql \&[ , 107and 108.Ql \e 109such that they lose their special meaning. 110For example, the pattern 111.Dq Li \e\e\e\&*\e[x]\e\&? 112matches the string 113.Dq \e\&*[x]\&? . 114.El 115.Pp 116Note that when matching a pathname, the path separator 117.Ql / , 118is not matched by a 119.Ql \&? , 120or 121.Ql * , 122character or by a 123.Dq Li [..] 124sequence. 125Thus, 126.Pa /usr/*/*/X11 127would match 128.Pa /usr/X11R6/lib/X11 129and 130.Pa /usr/X11R6/include/X11 131while 132.Pa /usr/*/X11 133would not match either. 134Likewise, 135.Pa /usr/*/bin 136would match 137.Pa /usr/local/bin 138but 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 145In early versions of 146.Ux , 147the shell did not do pattern expansion itself. 148A dedicated program, 149.Pa /etc/glob , 150was used to perform the expansion and pass the results to a command. 151In 152.At v7 , 153with the introduction of the Bourne shell, 154this functionality was incorporated into the shell itself. 155