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@(#)glob.3 8.3 (Berkeley) 4/16/94
$FreeBSD: releng/10.2/lib/libc/gen/glob.3 228754 2011-12-20 22:56:13Z eadler $
.Dd December 20, 2011 .Dt GLOB 3 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm glob , .Nm globfree .Nd generate pathnames matching a pattern .Sh LIBRARY .Lb libc .Sh SYNOPSIS n glob.h .Ft int .Fn glob "const char * restrict pattern" "int flags" "int (*errfunc)(const char *, int)" "glob_t * restrict pglob" .Ft void .Fn globfree "glob_t *pglob" .Sh DESCRIPTION The .Fn glob function is a pathname generator that implements the rules for file name pattern matching used by the shell.
p The include file n glob.h defines the structure type .Fa glob_t , which contains at least the following fields: d -literal typedef struct { size_t gl_pathc; /* count of total paths so far */ size_t gl_matchc; /* count of paths matching pattern */ size_t gl_offs; /* reserved at beginning of gl_pathv */ int gl_flags; /* returned flags */ char **gl_pathv; /* list of paths matching pattern */ } glob_t; .Ed
p The argument .Fa pattern is a pointer to a pathname pattern to be expanded. The .Fn 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, .Fn glob requires search permission on every component of a path except the last and read permission on each directory of any filename component of .Fa pattern that contains any of the special characters .Ql * , .Ql ?\& or .Ql [ .
p The .Fn glob argument stores the number of matched pathnames into the .Fa gl_pathc field, and a pointer to a list of pointers to pathnames into the .Fa gl_pathv field. The first pointer after the last pathname is .Dv NULL . If the pattern does not match any pathnames, the returned number of matched paths is set to zero.
p It is the caller's responsibility to create the structure pointed to by .Fa pglob . The .Fn glob function allocates other space as needed, including the memory pointed to by .Fa gl_pathv .
p The argument .Fa flags is used to modify the behavior of .Fn glob . The value of .Fa flags is the bitwise inclusive .Tn OR of any of the following values defined in n glob.h : l -tag -width GLOB_ALTDIRFUNC t Dv GLOB_APPEND Append pathnames generated to the ones from a previous call (or calls) to .Fn glob . The value of .Fa gl_pathc will be the total matches found by this call and the previous call(s). The pathnames are appended to, not merged with the pathnames returned by the previous call(s). Between calls, the caller must not change the setting of the .Dv GLOB_DOOFFS flag, nor change the value of .Fa gl_offs when .Dv GLOB_DOOFFS is set, nor (obviously) call .Fn globfree for .Fa pglob . t Dv GLOB_DOOFFS Make use of the .Fa gl_offs field. If this flag is set, .Fa gl_offs is used to specify how many .Dv NULL pointers to prepend to the beginning of the .Fa gl_pathv field. In other words, .Fa gl_pathv will point to .Fa gl_offs .Dv NULL pointers, followed by .Fa gl_pathc pathname pointers, followed by a .Dv NULL pointer. t Dv GLOB_ERR Causes .Fn glob to return when it encounters a directory that it cannot open or read. Ordinarily, .Fn glob continues to find matches. t Dv GLOB_MARK Each pathname that is a directory that matches .Fa pattern has a slash appended. t Dv GLOB_NOCHECK If .Fa pattern does not match any pathname, then .Fn glob returns a list consisting of only .Fa pattern , with the number of total pathnames set to 1, and the number of matched pathnames set to 0. The effect of backslash escaping is present in the pattern returned. t Dv GLOB_NOESCAPE By default, a backslash
q Ql \e character is used to escape the following character in the pattern, avoiding any special interpretation of the character. If .Dv GLOB_NOESCAPE is set, backslash escaping is disabled. t Dv GLOB_NOSORT By default, the pathnames are sorted in ascending .Tn ASCII order; this flag prevents that sorting (speeding up .Fn glob ) . .El
p The following values may also be included in .Fa flags , however, they are non-standard extensions to .St -p1003.2 . l -tag -width GLOB_ALTDIRFUNC t Dv 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 information on names found in those directories. d -literal void *(*gl_opendir)(const char * name); struct dirent *(*gl_readdir)(void *); void (*gl_closedir)(void *); int (*gl_lstat)(const char *name, struct stat *st); int (*gl_stat)(const char *name, struct stat *st); .Ed
p This extension is provided to allow programs such as .Xr restore 8 to provide globbing from directories stored on tape. t Dv GLOB_BRACE Pre-process the pattern string to expand .Ql {pat,pat,...} strings like .Xr csh 1 . The pattern .Ql {} is left unexpanded for historical reasons (and .Xr csh 1 does the same thing to ease typing of .Xr find 1 patterns). t Dv GLOB_MAGCHAR Set by the .Fn glob function if the pattern included globbing characters. See the description of the usage of the .Fa gl_matchc structure member for more details. t Dv GLOB_NOMAGIC Is the same as .Dv GLOB_NOCHECK but it only appends the .Fa pattern if it does not contain any of the special characters ``*'', ``?'' or ``[''. .Dv GLOB_NOMAGIC is provided to simplify implementing the historic .Xr csh 1 globbing behavior and should probably not be used anywhere else. t Dv GLOB_TILDE Expand patterns that start with .Ql ~ to user name home directories. t Dv GLOB_LIMIT Limit the total number of returned pathnames to the value provided in .Fa gl_matchc (default .Dv ARG_MAX ) . This option should be set for programs that can be coerced into a denial of service attack via patterns that expand to a very large number of matches, such as a long string of .Ql */../*/.. . .El
p If, during the search, a directory is encountered that cannot be opened or read and .Fa errfunc is
f non- Dv NULL , .Fn glob calls .Fa \*(lp*errfunc\*(rp Ns ( Fa path , errno ) . This may be unintuitive: a pattern like .Ql */Makefile will try to .Xr stat 2 .Ql foo/Makefile even if .Ql foo is not a directory, resulting in a call to .Fa errfunc . The error routine can suppress this action by testing for .Er ENOENT and .Er ENOTDIR ; however, the .Dv GLOB_ERR flag will still cause an immediate return when this happens.
p If .Fa errfunc returns non-zero, .Fn glob stops the scan and returns .Dv GLOB_ABORTED after setting .Fa gl_pathc and .Fa gl_pathv to reflect any paths already matched. This also happens if an error is encountered and .Dv GLOB_ERR is set in .Fa flags , regardless of the return value of .Fa errfunc , if called. If .Dv GLOB_ERR is not set and either .Fa errfunc is .Dv NULL or .Fa errfunc returns zero, the error is ignored.
p The .Fn globfree function frees any space associated with .Fa pglob from a previous call(s) to .Fn glob . .Sh RETURN VALUES On successful completion, .Fn glob returns zero. In addition the fields of .Fa pglob contain the values described below: l -tag -width GLOB_NOCHECK t Fa gl_pathc contains the total number of matched pathnames so far. This includes other matches from previous invocations of .Fn glob if .Dv GLOB_APPEND was specified. t Fa gl_matchc contains the number of matched pathnames in the current invocation of .Fn glob . t Fa gl_flags contains a copy of the .Fa flags argument with the bit .Dv GLOB_MAGCHAR set if .Fa pattern contained any of the special characters ``*'', ``?'' or ``['', cleared if not. t Fa gl_pathv contains a pointer to a .Dv NULL Ns -terminated list of matched pathnames. However, if .Fa gl_pathc is zero, the contents of .Fa gl_pathv are undefined. .El
p If .Fn 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 n glob.h : l -tag -width GLOB_NOCHECK t Dv GLOB_NOSPACE An attempt to allocate memory failed, or if .Fa errno was 0 .Dv GLOB_LIMIT was specified in the flags and .Fa pglob->gl_matchc or more patterns were matched. t Dv GLOB_ABORTED The scan was stopped because an error was encountered and either .Dv GLOB_ERR was set or .Fa \*(lp*errfunc\*(rp\*(lp\*(rp returned non-zero. t Dv GLOB_NOMATCH The pattern did not match a pathname and .Dv GLOB_NOCHECK was not set. .El
p The arguments .Fa pglob->gl_pathc and .Fa pglob->gl_pathv are still set as specified above. .Sh EXAMPLES A rough equivalent of .Ql "ls -l *.c *.h" can be obtained with the following code: d -literal -offset indent 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); .Ed .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr sh 1 , .Xr fnmatch 3 , .Xr regex 3 .Sh STANDARDS The current implementation of the .Fn glob function .Em does not conform to .St -p1003.2 . Collating symbol expressions, equivalence class expressions and character class expressions are not supported.
p The flags .Dv GLOB_ALTDIRFUNC , .Dv GLOB_BRACE , .Dv GLOB_LIMIT , .Dv GLOB_MAGCHAR , .Dv GLOB_NOMAGIC , and .Dv GLOB_TILDE , and the fields .Fa gl_matchc and .Fa gl_flags are extensions to the .Tn POSIX standard and should not be used by applications striving for strict conformance. .Sh HISTORY The .Fn glob and .Fn globfree functions first appeared in x 4.4 . .Sh BUGS Patterns longer than .Dv MAXPATHLEN may cause unchecked errors.
p The .Fn glob argument may fail and set errno for any of the errors specified for the library routines .Xr stat 2 , .Xr closedir 3 , .Xr opendir 3 , .Xr readdir 3 , .Xr malloc 3 , and .Xr free 3 .