Ubuntu Manpage: glob - Return names of files that match patterns

NAME

       glob - Return names of files that match patterns

SYNOPSIS

       glob ?switches? pattern ?pattern ...?
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DESCRIPTION

This command performs file name “globbing” in a fashion similar to the csh shell. It
returns a list of the files whose names match any of the pattern arguments. No particular
order is guaranteed in the list, so if a sorted list is required the caller should use
lsort.

If the initial arguments to glob start with - then they are treated as switches. The
following switches are currently supported:

-directory directory
Search for files which match the given patterns starting in the given directory.
This allows searching of directories whose name contains glob-sensitive characters
without the need to quote such characters explicitly. This option may not be used
in conjunction with -path, which is used to allow searching for complete file paths
whose names may contain glob-sensitive characters.

-join The remaining pattern arguments, after option processing, are treated as a single
pattern obtained by joining the arguments with directory separators.

-nocomplain
Allows an empty list to be returned without error; without this switch an error is
returned if the result list would be empty.

-path pathPrefix
Search for files with the given pathPrefix where the rest of the name matches the
given patterns. This allows searching for files with names similar to a given file
(as opposed to a directory) even when the names contain glob-sensitive characters.
This option may not be used in conjunction with -directory. For example, to find
all files with the same root name as $path, but differing extensions, you should
use glob -path [file rootname $path] .* which will work even if $path contains
numerous glob-sensitive characters.

-tails Only return the part of each file found which follows the last directory named in
any -directory or -path path specification. Thus glob -tails -directory $dir * is
equivalent to set pwd [pwd] ; cd $dir ; glob *; cd $pwd. For -path specifications,
the returned names will include the last path segment, so glob -tails -path [file
rootname ~/foo.tex] .* will return paths like foo.aux foo.bib foo.tex etc.

-types typeList
Only list files or directories which match typeList, where the items in the list
have two forms. The first form is like the -type option of the Unix find command:
b (block special file), c (character special file), d (directory), f (plain file),
l (symbolic link), p (named pipe), or s (socket), where multiple types may be
specified in the list. Glob will return all files which match at least one of the
types given. Note that symbolic links will be returned both if -types l is given,
or if the target of a link matches the requested type. So, a link to a directory
will be returned if -types d was specified.

The second form specifies types where all the types given must match. These are r,
w, x as file permissions, and readonly, hidden as special permission cases. On the
Macintosh, MacOS types and creators are also supported, where any item which is
four characters long is assumed to be a MacOS type (e.g. TEXT). Items which are of
the form {macintosh type XXXX} or {macintosh creator XXXX} will match types or
creators respectively. Unrecognized types, or specifications of multiple MacOS
types/creators will signal an error.

The two forms may be mixed, so -types {d f r w} will find all regular files OR
directories that have both read AND write permissions. The following are
equivalent:
glob -type d *
glob */
except that the first case doesn't return the trailing “/” and is more platform
independent.

-- Marks the end of switches. The argument following this one will be treated as a
pattern even if it starts with a -.

The pattern arguments may contain any of the following special characters:

? Matches any single character.

* Matches any sequence of zero or more characters.

[chars] Matches any single character in chars. If chars contains a sequence of the form
a-b then any character between a and b (inclusive) will match.

\x Matches the character x.

{a,b,...} Matches any of the strings a, b, etc.

On Unix, as with csh, a “.” at the beginning of a file's name or just after a “/” must be
matched explicitly or with a {} construct, unless the -types hidden flag is given (since
“.” at the beginning of a file's name indicates that it is hidden). On other platforms,
files beginning with a “.” are handled no differently to any others, except the special
directories “.” and “..” which must be matched explicitly (this is to avoid a recursive
pattern like “glob -join * * * *” from recursing up the directory hierarchy as well as
down). In addition, all “/” characters must be matched explicitly.

If the first character in a pattern is “~” then it refers to the home directory for the
user whose name follows the “~”. If the “~” is followed immediately by “/” then the value
of the HOME environment variable is used.

The glob command differs from csh globbing in two ways. First, it does not sort its
result list (use the lsort command if you want the list sorted). Second, glob only
returns the names of files that actually exist; in csh no check for existence is made
unless a pattern contains a ?, *, or [] construct.

When the glob command returns relative paths whose filenames start with a tilde “~” (for
example through glob * or glob -tails, the returned list will not quote the tilde with
“./”. This means care must be taken if those names are later to be used with file join,
to avoid them being interpreted as absolute paths pointing to a given user's home
directory.

PORTABILITY ISSUES

       Windows For Windows UNC names, the servername and sharename components of the path may not
       contain   ?,   *,   or  []  constructs.   On  Windows  NT,  if  pattern  is  of  the  form
       “~username@domain”, it refers to the home directory of the user whose account  information
       resides  on  the  specified  NT  domain  server.   Otherwise,  user account information is
       obtained from the local computer.  On Windows 95 and 98, glob accepts patterns like “.../”
       and “..../” for successively higher up parent directories.

       Since  the  backslash  character  has a special meaning to the glob command, glob patterns
       containing Windows style path separators need special  care.  The  pattern  C:\\foo\\*  is
       interpreted  as  C:\foo\* where \f will match the single character f and \* will match the
       single character * and will not be interpreted as a wildcard character.  One  solution  to
       this  problem  is  to  use the Unix style forward slash as a path separator. Windows style
       paths can be converted to Unix style paths with the  command  file  join  $path  (or  file
       normalize $path in Tcl 8.4).

EXAMPLES

       Find all the Tcl files in the current directory:
              glob *.tcl

       Find  all  the  Tcl  files  in the user's home directory, irrespective of what the current
       directory is:
              glob -directory ~ *.tcl

       Find all subdirectories of the current directory:
              glob -type d *

       Find all files whose name contains an “a”, a “b” or the sequence “cde”:
              glob -type f *{a,b,cde}*

KEYWORDS