NAME

       glob - Return names of files that match patterns

SYNOPSIS

       glob ?switches? ?pattern ...?
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DESCRIPTION

       This  command  performs  file  name  “globbing”  in a fashion similar to the csh shell or bash 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.

   OPTIONS
       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 -.

   GLOBBING PATTERNS
       The  pattern arguments may contain any of the following special characters, which are a superset of those
       supported by string match:

       ?         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 sub-patterns 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.

WINDOWS PORTABILITY ISSUES

       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.

       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”.

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}*

SEE ALSO

       file(3tcl)

KEYWORDS

       exist, file, glob, pattern