GLOB(3) BSD Programmer's Manual GLOB(3)
NAME
glob, globfree - generate pathnames matching a pattern
SYNOPSIS
#include <glob.h>
int
glob(const char *pattern, int flags, const int (*errfunc)(char *, int),
globt *pglob)
void
globfree(globt *pglob)
DESCRIPTION
The glob() function is a pathname generator that implements the rules for
file name pattern matching used by the shell.
The include file glob.h defines the structure type globt, which contains
at least the following fields:
typedef struct {
int gl_pathc; /* count of total paths so far */
int gl_matchc; /* count of paths matching pattern */
int gl_offs; /* reserved at beginning of gl_pathv */
int gl_flags; /* returned flags */
char **gl_pathv; /* list of paths matching pattern */
} glob_t;
The argument pattern is a pointer to a pathname pattern to be expanded.
The glob() argument matches all accessible pathnames against the pattern
and creates a list of the pathnames that match. In order to have access
to a pathname, glob() requires search permission on every component of a
path except the last and read permission on each directory of any file-
name component of pattern that contains any of the special characters
`*', `?' or `['.
The glob() argument stores the number of matched pathnames into the
glpathc field, and a pointer to a list of pointers to pathnames into the
glpathv field. The first pointer after the last pathname is NULL. If
the pattern does not match any pathnames, the returned number of matched
paths is set to zero.
It is the caller's responsibility to create the structure pointed to by
pglob. The glob() function allocates other space as needed, including the
memory pointed to by glpathv.
The argument flags is used to modify the behavior of glob(). The value
of flags is the bitwise inclusive OR of any of the following values de-
fined in glob.h:
GLOB_APPEND Append pathnames generated to the ones from a previous call
(or calls) to glob(). The value of glpathc will be the
total matches found by this call and the previous call(s).
The pathnames are appended to, not merged with the path-
names returned by the previous call(s). Between calls, the
caller must not change the setting of the GLOB_DOOFFS flag,
nor change the value of gloffs when GLOB_DOOFFS is set,
nor (obviously) call globfree() for pglob.
GLOB_DOOFFS Make use of the gloffs field. If this flag is set,
gloffs is used to specify how many NULL pointers to
prepend to the beginning of the glpathv field. In other
words, glpathv will point to gloffs NULL pointers, fol-
lowed by glpathc pathname pointers, followed by a NULL
pointer.
GLOB_ERR Causes glob() to return when it encounters a directory that
it cannot open or read. Ordinarily, glob() continues to
find matches.
GLOB_MARK Each pathname that is a directory that matches pattern has
a slash appended.
GLOB_NOCHECK If pattern does not match any pathname, then glob() returns
a list consisting of only pattern, with the number of total
pathnames is set to 1, and the number of matched pathnames
set to 0. If GLOB_QUOTE is set, its effect is present in
the pattern returned.
GLOB_NOMAGIC Is the same as GLOB_NOCHECK but it only appends the pattern
if it does not contain any of the special characters ``*'',
``?'' or ``[''. GLOB_NOMAGIC is provided to simplify im-
plementing the historic csh(1) globbing behavior and should
probably not be used anywhere else.
GLOB_NOSORT By default, the pathnames are sorted in ascending ASCII or-
der; this flag prevents that sorting (speeding up glob()).
GLOB_QUOTE Use the backslash (`\') character for quoting: every occur-
rence of a backslash followed by a character in the pattern
is replaced by that character, avoiding any special inter-
pretation of the character.
GLOB_ALTDIRFUNC
The following additional fields in the pglob structure have
been initialized with alternate functions for glob to use
to open, read, and close directories and to get stat infor-
mation on names found in those directories.
void *(*gl_opendir)();
struct dirent *(*gl_readdir)();
void (*gl_closedir)();
int (*gl_lstat)();
int (*gl_stat)();
This non-standard extension is provided to allow programs
such as restore to provide globbing from directories stored
on tape.
If, during the search, a directory is encountered that cannot be opened
or read and errfunc is non-NULL, glob() calls (*errfunc)(path,errno).
This may be unintuitive: a pattern like `*/Makefile' will try to stat(2)
`foo/Makefile' even if `foo' is not a directory, resulting in a call to
errfunc. The error routine can suppress this action by testing for ENOENT
and ENOTDIR; however, the GLOB_ERR flag will still cause an immediate re-
turn when this happens.
If errfunc returns non-zero, glob() stops the scan and returns GLOB_ABEND
after setting glpathc and glpathv to reflect any paths already matched.
This also happens if an error is encountered and GLOB_ERR is set in
flags, regardless of the return value of errfunc, if called. If GLOB_ERR
is not set and either errfunc is NULL or errfunc returns zero, the error
is ignored.
The globfree() function frees any space associated with pglob from a pre-
vious call(s) to glob().
RETURN VALUES
On successful completion, glob() returns zero. In addition the fields of
pglob contain the values described below:
glpathc contains the total number of matched pathnames so far.
This includes other matches from previous invocations of
glob() if GLOB_APPEND was specified.
glmatchc contains the number of matched pathnames in the current in-
vocation of glob().
glflags contains a copy of the flags parameter with the bit
GLOB_MAGCHAR set if pattern contained any of the special
characters ``*'', ``?'' or ``['', cleared if not.
glpathv contains a pointer to a NULL-terminated list of matched
pathnames. However, if glpathc is zero, the contents of
glpathv are undefined.
If glob() terminates due to an error, it sets errno and returns one of
the following non-zero constants, which are defined in the include file
<glob.h>:
GLOB_NOSPACE An attempt to allocate memory failed.
GLOB_ABEND The scan was stopped because an error was encountered and
either GLOB_ERR was set or (*errfunc)() returned non-zero.
The arguments pglob->glpathc and pglob->glpathv are still set as speci-
fied above.
SEE ALSO
sh(1), fnmatch(3), wordexp(3), regexp(3)
STANDARDS
The glob() function is expected to be IEEE Std1003.2 (``POSIX'') compati-
ble with the exception that the flags GLOB_ALTDIRFUNC and GLOB_QUOTE and
the fields glmatchc and glflags should not be used by applications
striving for strict POSIX conformance.
EXAMPLE
A rough equivalent of `ls -l *.c *.h' can be obtained with the following
code:
GLOB_t g;
g.gl_offs = 2;
glob("*.c", GLOB_DOOFFS, NULL, &g);
glob("*.h", GLOB_DOOFFS | GLOB_APPEND, NULL, &g);
g.gl_pathv[0] = "ls";
g.gl_pathv[1] = "-l";
execvp("ls", g.gl_pathv);
HISTORY
The glob() and globfree() functions are currently under development.
BUGS
Patterns longer than MAXPATHLEN may cause unchecked errors.
The glob() argument may fail and set errno for any of the errors speci-
fied for the library routines stat(2), closedir(3), opendir(3),
readdir(3), malloc(3), and free(3).
BSDI BSD/386 March 26, 1993 3