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NAME

       glob, globfree - find pathnames matching a pattern, free memory from glob()

SYNOPSIS

       #include <glob.h>

       int glob(const char *restrict pattern, int flags,
                int (*errfunc)(const char *epath, int eerrno),
                glob_t *restrict pglob);
       void globfree(glob_t *pglob);

DESCRIPTION

       The glob() function searches for all the pathnames matching pattern according to the rules
       used by the shell (see glob(7)).  No tilde expansion or parameter substitution is done; if
       you want these, use wordexp(3).

       The  globfree()  function  frees the dynamically allocated storage from an earlier call to
       glob().

       The results of a glob() call are stored in  the  structure  pointed  to  by  pglob.   This
       structure  is  of  type  glob_t (declared in <glob.h>) and includes the following elements
       defined by POSIX.2 (more may be present as an extension):

           typedef struct {
               size_t   gl_pathc;    /* Count of paths matched so far  */
               char   **gl_pathv;    /* List of matched pathnames.  */
               size_t   gl_offs;     /* Slots to reserve in gl_pathv.  */
           } glob_t;

       Results are stored in dynamically allocated storage.

       The argument flags is made up of the bitwise OR of zero or  more  the  following  symbolic
       constants, which modify the behavior of glob():

       GLOB_ERR
              Return  upon  a  read error (because a directory does not have read permission, for
              example).  By default, glob() attempts carry on despite errors, reading all of  the
              directories that it can.

       GLOB_MARK
              Append a slash to each path which corresponds to a directory.

       GLOB_NOSORT
              Don't  sort  the  returned  pathnames.   The  only  reason  to  do  this is to save
              processing time.  By default, the returned pathnames are sorted.

       GLOB_DOOFFS
              Reserve  pglob->gl_offs  slots  at  the  beginning  of  the  list  of  strings   in
              pglob->pathv.  The reserved slots contain null pointers.

       GLOB_NOCHECK
              If  no  pattern  matches,  return the original pattern.  By default, glob() returns
              GLOB_NOMATCH if there are no matches.

       GLOB_APPEND
              Append the results of this call to the vector of results  returned  by  a  previous
              call to glob().  Do not set this flag on the first invocation of glob().

       GLOB_NOESCAPE
              Don't  allow  backslash  ('\')  to  be  used  as  an escape character.  Normally, a
              backslash can be used to quote the following character, providing  a  mechanism  to
              turn off the special meaning metacharacters.

       flags  may  also include any of the following, which are GNU extensions and not defined by
       POSIX.2:

       GLOB_PERIOD
              Allow a leading period to be matched by metacharacters.  By default, metacharacters
              can't match a leading period.

       GLOB_ALTDIRFUNC
              Use alternative functions pglob->gl_closedir, pglob->gl_readdir, pglob->gl_opendir,
              pglob->gl_lstat, and pglob->gl_stat for filesystem access  instead  of  the  normal
              library functions.

       GLOB_BRACE
              Expand  csh(1) style brace expressions of the form {a,b}.  Brace expressions can be
              nested.  Thus, for example, specifying  the  pattern  "{foo/{,cat,dog},bar}"  would
              return  the  same  results as four separate glob() calls using the strings: "foo/",
              "foo/cat", "foo/dog", and "bar".

       GLOB_NOMAGIC
              If the pattern contains no metacharacters, then it should be returned as  the  sole
              matching word, even if there is no file with that name.

       GLOB_TILDE
              Carry  out tilde expansion.  If a tilde ('~') is the only character in the pattern,
              or an initial tilde is followed  immediately  by  a  slash  ('/'),  then  the  home
              directory  of  the  caller  is  substituted  for the tilde.  If an initial tilde is
              followed by a username (e.g., "~andrea/bin"),  then  the  tilde  and  username  are
              substituted by the home directory of that user.  If the username is invalid, or the
              home directory cannot be determined, then no substitution is performed.

       GLOB_TILDE_CHECK
              This provides behavior similar to that of GLOB_TILDE.  The difference  is  that  if
              the  username  is invalid, or the home directory cannot be determined, then instead
              of using the pattern itself as the name, glob() returns GLOB_NOMATCH to indicate an
              error.

       GLOB_ONLYDIR
              This  is  a  hint  to glob() that the caller is interested only in directories that
              match  the  pattern.   If  the  implementation  can  easily   determine   file-type
              information,  then nondirectory files are not returned to the caller.  However, the
              caller must still check that returned files are directories.  (The purpose of  this
              flag  is  merely  to  optimize  performance  when  the caller is interested only in
              directories.)

       If errfunc is not NULL, it will be called in case of an error with the arguments epath,  a
       pointer  to  the path which failed, and eerrno, the value of errno as returned from one of
       the calls to opendir(3), readdir(3), or  stat(2).   If  errfunc  returns  nonzero,  or  if
       GLOB_ERR is set, glob() will terminate after the call to errfunc.

       Upon  successful  return,  pglob->gl_pathc  contains  the  number of matched pathnames and
       pglob->gl_pathv contains a pointer to the list of pointers to matched pathnames.  The list
       of pointers is terminated by a null pointer.

       It is possible to call glob() several times.  In that case, the GLOB_APPEND flag has to be
       set in flags on the second and later invocations.

       As a GNU extension, pglob->gl_flags is set to the flags specified, ored with  GLOB_MAGCHAR
       if any metacharacters were found.

RETURN VALUE

       On successful completion, glob() returns zero.  Other possible returns are:

       GLOB_NOSPACE
              for running out of memory,

       GLOB_ABORTED
              for a read error, and

       GLOB_NOMATCH
              for no found matches.

ATTRIBUTES

       For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see attributes(7).

       ┌───────────┬───────────────┬─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
       │InterfaceAttributeValue                                                       │
       ├───────────┼───────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
       │glob()     │ Thread safety │ MT-Unsafe race:utent env sig:ALRM timer locale              │
       ├───────────┼───────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
       │globfree() │ Thread safety │ MT-Safe                                                     │
       └───────────┴───────────────┴─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
       In  the  above  table,  utent  in  race:utent  signifies  that  if  any  of  the functions
       setutent(3), getutent(3), or endutent(3) are used in parallel in different  threads  of  a
       program,  then data races could occur.  glob() calls those functions, so we use race:utent
       to remind users.

CONFORMING TO

       POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008, POSIX.2.

NOTES

       The structure elements gl_pathc and gl_offs are declared as size_t in glibc 2.1,  as  they
       should be according to POSIX.2, but are declared as int in glibc 2.0.

BUGS

       The  glob()  function  may  fail  due  to  failure  of  underlying function calls, such as
       malloc(3) or opendir(3).  These will store their error code in errno.

EXAMPLES

       One example of use is the following code, which simulates typing

           ls -l *.c ../*.c

       in the shell:

           glob_t globbuf;

           globbuf.gl_offs = 2;
           glob("*.c", GLOB_DOOFFS, NULL, &globbuf);
           glob("../*.c", GLOB_DOOFFS | GLOB_APPEND, NULL, &globbuf);
           globbuf.gl_pathv[0] = "ls";
           globbuf.gl_pathv[1] = "-l";
           execvp("ls", &globbuf.gl_pathv[0]);

SEE ALSO

       ls(1), sh(1), stat(2), exec(3), fnmatch(3), malloc(3), opendir(3), readdir(3), wordexp(3),
       glob(7)

COLOPHON

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       project, information about reporting bugs, and the latest version of  this  page,  can  be
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