NAME

       match - Match strings against glob patterns

SYNOPSIS

       match [-gilrqs] [-n <n>] [-c cmd] [-x code] {[-p] pattern | -f <file>} str1 [str2 ...]

DESCRIPTION

       match checks strings against pattern, which should be a shell-like glob pattern.  pattern may contain the
       following special characters:

       ?   A "?" character in pattern matches any single character in the string, except that the "/" character
           is only matched if match was given the -s option.

       *   A "*" character in pattern matches zero or more characters in the string.  The exception is that it
           will only match "/" characters if match was given the -s option.

       [...]
           A set of characters between square brackets matches any character in the set.  In addition, the "-"
           character can be used to specify a range.  For example "[+e0-3]" would match any of the characters
           "+", "e", 0, 1, 2, or 3 in the input string.  To include a hyphen ("-") in the set of characters
           matched, either include the hyphen first or last, or escape it with a "\".

       [!...]
           A character class preceded by a "!" matches any character but those specified in the class.  The
           exception is that the negated character class will match a "/" only if match was given the -s option.

       \c  The backslash character escapes the next character c.  Thus, to match a literal "*", you would use
           the pattern "\*".

       match prints each string that matches pattern, one per line, and exits 0 if one or more strings matched.
       If no string matches, match exits with status 67 (or whatever alternate status was specified by the -x
       flag).  If the -n n flag was specified, match prints only the text that matched the nth occurrence of "*"
       in the patten.

   OPTIONS
       -f file
           Specifies that the pattern should be read from file.  match will read each line of the file and
           consider it as pattern to match against the argument strings.  For each argument string, match stops
           when it hits the first matching line of the file.  If file does not exist, match exits 67, or
           whatever code was specified by -x.

       -g  Normally, the -n option selects text matching particular "*" characters in the pattern.  -g changes
           this behavior to use parentheses for grouping.  Thus, for instance, the text "foo.c" would match
           pattern "*(.[ch])", and the output with option -n 1 would be ".c".  To include a literal "(" or ")"
           in the pattern with the -g option, you must precede the character with a "\".

       -i  Makes the match case insensitive.  str will be considered to match if any variation on its
           capitalization would match.  For example, string "G" would match pattern "[f-h]".

       -l  When a pattern matches the string in more than one way, the -l flag says to assign as much text as
           possible to the leftmost "*"s in the pattern.  For example, pattern "*+*" would match text "a+b+c",
           and the first "*" would match "a+b".  This behavior is the default, thus -l's effect is only to undo
           a previous -r flag.

       -n n
           With this flag, match prints the text that matched the nth "*" in the pattern, as opposed to printing
           the whole string.  The leftmost "*" corresponds to -n 1.  Specifying -n 0 causes match to print the
           whole matching string.  Specifying -n -1 or using a value greater than the number of "*"s in the
           pattern causes match not to print anything, in which case you can still use the exit status to see if
           there is a match.  The default value for n is 0, unless -g has also been specified, in which case the
           default is 1.

       -c command
           When -c is specified, match runs command with the system shell (/bin/sh), giving it as argument $0
           the full string that matched, and as arguments $1, $2, etc., the parts of the string that matched any
           "*"s in pattern.  If the command does not exit with status 0, match will exit immediately, before
           processing further matches, with whatever status command returned.  The -c and -n flags are mutually
           exclusive.

       -p pattern
           Specifies the pattern to match against.  The -p flag is optional; you can specify pattern as the
           first argument following the options.  However, if you want to try matching the same input string
           against multiple patterns, then you must specify each pattern with a -p flag.

       -q  This option is synonymous with -n -1; it suppresses output when there is a match.  You can still
           determine whether a match occurred by the exit status.

       -r  When a pattern matches the string in more than one way, the -r flag says to assign as much text as
           possible to the rightmost "*"s in the pattern.  For example, with -r, pattern "*+*" would match text
           "a+b+c" with the "*" matching "a", and the second matching "b+c".

       -s  Ordinarily, "*", "?", and negated character classes ("[!...]") do not match "/" characters.  -s
           changes this behavior to match slashes.

       -x code
           By default, when there is no match, match exits with status 67.  With this option, match exits with
           status code, instead.

EXAMPLES

       Suppose you have a directory with a bunch of files ending .c and .o.  If, for each file named foo.c you
       want to attempt to delete the file foo.o, you can run the following command:

            match -p '*.c' -c 'rm -f $1.o' *.c

       Servers running the mailman list manager often send mail from bounce addresses of the form
       listname-bounces@host.com.  If you subscribe to multiple lists on the same server, the mailman interface
       makes it easier if you subscribe under the same address.  To split the mail into multiple folders based
       on the bounce address in the environment variable SENDER, you might chose a mailbox with the following
       shell code:

            name=`match -n1 "*-bounces@host.com" "$SENDER"` \
                 && echo "$HOME/Mail/incoming/host-$name.spool"

SEE ALSO

       avenger(1), avenger.local(8)

       The Mail Avenger home page: <http://www.mailavenger.org/>.

AUTHOR

       David Mazieres