File::FnMatch (3)

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NAME

File::FnMatch - simple filename and pathname matching

SYNOPSIS

  use File::FnMatch qw(:fnmatch);    # import everything

  # shell-style: match "/a/bc", but not "/a/.bc" nor "/a/b/c"
  fnmatch("/a/*", $fn, FNM_PATHNAME|FNM_PERIOD);

  # find our A- executables only
  grep { fnmatch("A-*.exe", $_) } readdir SOMEDIR;

DESCRIPTION

File::FnMatch::fnmatch() provides simple, shell-like pattern matching.

Though considerably less powerful than regular expressions, shell patterns are nonetheless useful and familiar to a large audience of end-users.

Functions

fnmatch (

PATTERN, STRING

[,

FLAGS

] )

Returns true if

PATTERN

matches

STRING

, undef otherwise.

FLAGS

may be the bitwise

OR

'ing of any supported FNM_* constants (see below).

Constants

FNM_NOESCAPE

Do not treat a backslash ('\') in

PATTERN

specially. Otherwise, a backslash escapes the following character.

FNM_PATHNAME

Prohibit wildcards from matching a slash ('/').

FNM_PERIOD

Prohibit wildcards from matching a period ('.') at the start of a string and, if

FNM_PATHNAME

is also given, immediately after a slash.

Other possibilities include at least

(compare "qr//i"), to restrict matching to everything before the first '/', as a synonym for and the rather more exotic Consult your system documentation for details.

EXPORT

None by default. The export tag ":fnmatch" exports the fnmatch function and all available FNM_* constants.

PATTERN SYNTAX

Wildcards are the question mark ('?') to match any single character and the asterisk ('*') to match zero or more characters. and restrict the scope of the wildcards, notably supporting the convention of concealing ``dotfiles'':

Bracket expressions, enclosed by '[' and ']', match any of a set of characters specified explicitly ("[abcdef]"), as a range ("[a-f0-9]"), or as the combination these ("[a-f0-9XYZ]"). Additionally, many implementations support named character classes such as "[[:xdigit:]]". Character sets may be negated with an initial '!' ("[![:space:]]").

Locale influences the meaning of fnmatch() patterns.

CAVEATS

Most UNIX-like systems provide an fnmatch implementation. This module will not work on platforms lacking an implementation, most notably Win32.

SEE ALSO

File::Glob, POSIX::setlocale, fnmatch(3)

AUTHOR

Michael J. Pomraning

Please report bugs to <mjp-perl

pilcrow.madison.wi.us>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright 2005 by Michael J. Pomraning

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.