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ActiveTcl User Guide |
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- NAME
- glob - Return names of files that match patterns
- SYNOPSIS
- glob ?switches? pattern ?pattern
...?
- DESCRIPTION
- -directory
directory
- -join
- -nocomplain
- -path
pathPrefix
- -tails
- -types
typeList
- --
- ?
- *
- [chars]
- \x
- {a,b,...}
- PORTABILITY ISSUES
- EXAMPLES
- SEE ALSO
- KEYWORDS
glob - Return names of files that match patterns
glob ?switches? pattern ?pattern
...?
This command performs file name “globbing” in a fashion
similar to the csh 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.
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 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
-.
The pattern arguments may contain any of the following
special characters:
- ?
- 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 strings 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 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. On Windows 95 and
98, glob accepts patterns like “.../” and
“..../” for successively higher up parent directories.
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 in Tcl 8.4).
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}*
file
exist, file, glob, pattern
Copyright © 1995-1997 Roger E. Critchlow Jr.
Copyright © 1993 The Regents of the University of California.
Copyright © 1994-1996 Sun Microsystems, Inc.