NAME

       wildmat - perform shell-style wildcard matching

SYNOPSIS

       int
       wildmat(text, pattern)
           char       *text;
           char       *pattern;

DESCRIPTION

       Wildmat  is part of libinn (3).  Wildmat compares the text against the pattern and returns
       non-zero if the pattern matches the text.  The pattern is interpreted according  to  rules
       similar  to  shell  filename wildcards, and not as a full regular expression such as those
       handled by the grep(1) family of programs or the regex(3) or regexp(3) set of routines.

       The pattern is interpreted as follows:

       \x     Turns off the special meaning of x and matches it directly;  this  is  used  mostly
              before a question mark or asterisk, and is not special inside square brackets.

       ?      Matches any single character.

       *      Matches any sequence of zero or more characters.

       [x...y]
              Matches  any single character specified by the set x...y.  A minus sign may be used
              to indicate  a  range  of  characters.   That  is,  [0-5abc]  is  a  shorthand  for
              [012345abc].   More than one range may appear inside a character set; [0-9a-zA-Z._]
              matches almost all of the legal characters for a host name.  The close bracket,  ],
              may  be  used  if  it is the first character in the set.  The minus sign, -, may be
              used if it is either the first or last character in the set.

       [^x...y]
              This matches any character not in the set x...y, which is interpreted as  described
              above.   For  example,  [^]-]  matches  any character other than a close bracket or
              minus sign.

HISTORY

       Written by Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> in 1986, and  posted  to  Usenet  several  times
       since then, most notably in comp.sources.misc in March, 1991.

       Lars Mathiesen <thorinn@diku.dk> enhanced the multi-asterisk failure mode in early 1991.

       Rich   and   Lars   increased   the  efficiency  of  star  patterns  and  reposted  it  to
       comp.sources.misc in April, 1991.

       Robert Elz <kre@munnari.oz.au> added minus sign and close bracket handling in June, 1991.

       This is revision 1.10, dated 1992/04/03.

SEE ALSO

       grep(1), regex(3), regexp(3).

                                                                                       WILDMAT(3)