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GLOB(7) 		   Linux Programmers Manual		      GLOB(7)



NAME
       glob - Globbing pathnames

DESCRIPTION
       Long  ago,  in Unix V6, there was a program /etc/glob that would expand
       wildcard patterns.  Soon afterwards this became a shell built-in.

       These days there is also a library routine glob(3)  that  will  perform
       this function for a user program.

       The rules are as follows (POSIX.2, 3.13).

   Wildcard Matching
       A  string  is  a  wildcard pattern if it contains one of the characters
       '?', '*' or '['.  Globbing is the operation  that  expands  a  wildcard
       pattern	into  the list of pathnames matching the pattern.  Matching is
       defined by:

       A '?' (not between brackets) matches any single character.

       A '*' (not between brackets) matches any string,  including  the  empty
       string.

       Character classes

       An  expression  "[...]" where the first character after the leading '['
       is not an '!' matches a single character, namely any of the  characters
       enclosed  by  the brackets.  The string enclosed by the brackets cannot
       be empty; therefore ']' can be allowed between the  brackets,  provided
       that it is the first character.	(Thus, "[][!]" matches the three char
       acters '[', ']' and '!'.)

       Ranges

       There is one special convention: two characters separated by '-' denote
       a    range.    (Thus,   "[A-Fa-f0-9]"   is   equivalent	 to   "[ABCDE
       Fabcdef0123456789]".)  One may include '-' in its  literal  meaning  by
       making  it  the	first  or last character between the brackets.	(Thus,
       "[]-]" matches just the two characters ']' and '-', and "[--0]" matches
       the three characters '-', '.', '0', since '/' cannot be matched.)

       Complementation

       An expression "[!...]" matches a single character, namely any character
       that is not matched by the expression obtained by  removing  the  first
       '!'  from it.  (Thus, "[!]a-]" matches any single character except ']',
       'a' and '-'.)

       One can remove the special meaning of '?', '*'  and  '['  by  preceding
       them  by a backslash, or, in case this is part of a shell command line,
       enclosing them in quotes.  Between brackets these characters stand  for
       themselves.   Thus,  "[[?*\]" matches the four characters '[', '?', '*'
       and '\'.

   Pathnames
       Globbing is applied on each of the components of a pathname separately.
       A '/' in a pathname cannot be matched by a '?' or '*' wildcard, or by a
       range like "[.-0]".  A range cannot contain an explicit '/'  character;
       this would lead to a syntax error.

       If a filename starts with a '.', this character must be matched explic
       itly.  (Thus, rm * will not  remove  .profile,  and  tar c *  will  not
       archive all your files; tar c . is better.)

   Empty Lists
       The  nice  and simple rule given above: "expand a wildcard pattern into
       the list of matching pathnames" was the original Unix  definition.   It
       allowed one to have patterns that expand into an empty list, as in
	   xv -wait 0 *.gif *.jpg
       where  perhaps  no  *.gif files are present (and this is not an error).
       However, POSIX requires that a wildcard pattern is left unchanged  when
       it  is  syntactically  incorrect,  or the list of matching pathnames is
       empty.  With bash one can  force  the  classical  behavior  by  setting
       allow_null_glob_expansion=true.

       (Similar problems occur elsewhere.  E.g., where old scripts have
	   rm `find . -name "*~"`
       new scripts require
	   rm -f nosuchfile `find . -name "*~"`
       to avoid error messages from rm called with an empty argument list.)

NOTES
   Regular expressions
       Note  that wildcard patterns are not regular expressions, although they
       are a bit similar.  First of all, they  match  filenames,  rather  than
       text, and secondly, the conventions are not the same: for example, in a
       regular expression '*' means zero  or  more  copies  of	the  preceding
       thing.

       Now  that  regular expressions have bracket expressions where the nega
       tion is indicated by a '^', POSIX has declared the effect of a wildcard
       pattern "[^...]" to be undefined.

   Character classes and Internationalization
       Of  course  ranges  were  originally  meant to be ASCII ranges, so that
       "[ -%]" stands for "[ !"#$%]" and "[a-z]"  stands  for  "any  lowercase
       letter".   Some	Unix  implementations generalized this so that a range
       X-Y stands for the set of characters with code between the codes for  X
       and  for Y.  However, this requires the user to know the character cod
       ing in use on the local system, and moreover, is not convenient if  the
       collating  sequence for the local alphabet differs from the ordering of
       the character codes.  Therefore, POSIX extended	the  bracket  notation
       greatly,  both  for  wildcard patterns and for regular expressions.  In
       the above we saw three types of items  that  can  occur	in  a  bracket
       expression:  namely  (i) the negation, (ii) explicit single characters,
       and (iii) ranges.  POSIX specifies ranges in  an  internationally  more
       useful way and adds three more types:

       (iii)  Ranges  X-Y  comprise  all  characters that fall between X and Y
       (inclusive) in the current collating sequence as defined by the LC_COL
       LATE category in the current locale.

       (iv) Named character classes, like

       [:alnum:]  [:alpha:]  [:blank:]	[:cntrl:]
       [:digit:]  [:graph:]  [:lower:]	[:print:]
       [:punct:]  [:space:]  [:upper:]	[:xdigit:]

       so  that  one can say "[[:lower:]]" instead of "[a-z]", and have things
       work in Denmark, too, where there are three letters  past  'z'  in  the
       alphabet.  These character classes are defined by the LC_CTYPE category
       in the current locale.

       (v) Collating symbols, like "[.ch.]" or "[.a-acute.]", where the string
       between	"[."  and  ".]" is a collating element defined for the current
       locale.	Note that this may be a multi-character element.

       (vi) Equivalence class expressions,  like  "[=a=]",  where  the	string
       between	"[="  and  "=]"  is any collating element from its equivalence
       class, as defined for the current locale.  For example, "[[=a=]]" might
       be equivalent to "[a]" (warning: Latin-1 here), that is, to "[a[.a-
       acute.][.a-grave.][.a-umlaut.][.a-circumflex.]]".

SEE ALSO
       sh(1), fnmatch(3), glob(3), locale(7), regex(7)

COLOPHON
       This page is part of release 3.05 of the Linux  man-pages  project.   A
       description  of	the project, and information about reporting bugs, can
       be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.



Linux				  2003-08-24			       GLOB(7)




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