wcmatch.glob

from wcmatch import glob

Syntax

The glob library provides methods for traversing the file system and returning files that matched a defined set of glob patterns. The library also provides a function called globmatch for matching file paths which is similar to fnmatch, but for paths. In short, globmatch matches what glob globs .

• Slashes are generally treated special in glob related methods. Slashes are not matched in [], *, ?, or extended patterns like *(...). Slashes can be matched by ** if GLOBSTAR is set.

• Slashes on Windows are normalized. / will match both / and \\. There is no need to explicitly use \\ in patterns on Windows, but if you do, they must be escaped to specify a literal \\. If a backslash is escaped, it will match all valid windows separators, just like / does.

• On Windows, drives are treated special and must come at the beginning of the pattern and cannot be matched with *, [], ?, or even extended match patterns like +(...).

• Windows drives are recognized as either C:/ and //Server/mount/. If a path uses an ambiguous root (/some/path), the system will assume the drive of the current working directory.

• Meta characters have no effect when inside a UNC path: //Server?/mount*/. The one exception is pattern expansion characters like {} which are used by brace expansion and | used by pattern splitting. Pattern expansion characters are the only characters that can be escaped in a Windows drive/mount.

• If FORCEUNIX is applied on a Windows system, match and filter commands that do not touch the file system will not have slashes normalized. In addition, drive letters will also not be handled. Essentially, paths will be treated as if on a Linux/Unix system. Commands that do touch the file system (glob and iglob) will ignore FORCEUNIX and FORCEWIN. globmatch and globfilter, will also ignore FORCEUNIX and FORCEWIN if the REALPATH flag is enabled.

  FORCEWIN will do the opposite on a Linux/Unix system, and will force Windows logic on a Linux/Unix system. Like with FORCEUNIX, it only applies to commands that don't touch the file system.

• By default, file and directory names starting with . are only matched with literal .. The patterns *, **, ?, and [] will not match a leading .. To alter this behavior, you can use the DOTGLOB flag.

• NEGATE will always enable DOTGLOB in exclude patterns.

• Even with DOTGLOB enabled, special tokens will not match a special directory (. or ..). But when a literal . is used at the start of the pattern (.*, ., .., etc.), . and .. can potentially be matched.

• In general, Wildcard Match's behavior is modeled off of Bash's, and prior to version 7.0, unlike Python's default glob, Wildcard Match's glob would match and return . and .. for magic patterns like .*. This is because our directory scanning logic inserts . and .. into results to be faithful to Bash. While this emulates Bash's behavior, it can be surprising to the user, especially if they are used to Python's default glob. In 7.0 we now avoid returning . and .. in our directory scanner. This does not affect how patterns are matched, just what is returned via our directory scan logic. You can once again enable the old Bash-like behavior with the flag SCANDOTDIR if this old behavior is desired.

  Python's default:

  >>> import glob
  >>> glob.glob('docs/.*')
  []
  

  Wildcard Match:

  >>> from wcmatch import glob
  >>> glob.glob('docs/.*')
  []
  

  Bash:

  $ echo docs/.*
  docs/. docs/..
  

  Bash-like behavior restored in Wildcard Match SCANDOTDIR:

  >>> from wcmatch import glob
  >>> glob.glob('docs/.*', flags=glob.SCANDOTDIR)
  ['docs/.', 'docs/..']
  

  It is important to stress that this logic only relates to directory scanning and does not fundamentally alter glob patterns. We can still match a path of .. with .* when strictly doing a match:

  >>> from wcmatch import glob
  >>> glob.globmatch('..', '.*')
  True
  

  Nor does it affect exclude results as they are used to filter the results after directory scanning:

  >>> from wcmatch import glob
  >>> glob.glob('..')
  ['..']
  >>> glob.glob(['..', '!.*'], flags=glob.NEGATE)
  []
  

  If we wish to fundamentally alter the pattern matching behavior, we can use NODOTDIR. This would provide a more Zsh feel.

  >>> from wcmatch import glob
  >>> glob.glob(['..', '!.*'], flags=glob.NEGATE | glob.NODOTDIR)
  ['..']
  >>> glob.glob(['..', '!..'], flags=glob.NEGATE | glob.NODOTDIR)
  []
  >>> glob.globmatch('..', '.*', flags=glob.NODOTDIR)
  False
  

  Changes 7.0

  Prior to 7.0 . and .. would get returned by our directory scanner. This is no longer the default.

  New 7.0

  Legacy behavior of directory scanning, in relation to . and .., can be restored via SCANDOTDIR.

  NODOTDIR was added in 7.0.

POSIX Character Classes

A number of POSIX style character classes are available in the form [:alnum:]. They must be used inside sequences: [[:digit:]]. The C locale is used, and the values for each character class are found in the table below.

Windows Separators

On Windows, it is not required to use backslashes for path separators as / will match path separators for all systems. The following will work on Windows and Linux/Unix systems.

glob.glob('docs/.*')

With that said, you can match Windows separators with backslashes as well. Keep in mind that Wildcard Match allows escaped characters in patterns, so to match a literal backslash separator, you must escape the backslash. It is advised to use raw strings when using backslashes to make the patterns more readable, but either of the below will work.

glob.glob(r'docs\\.*')
glob.glob('docs\\\\.*')

Multi-Pattern Limits

Many of the API functions allow passing in multiple patterns or using either BRACE or SPLIT to expand a pattern in to more patterns. The number of allowed patterns is limited 1000, but you can raise or lower this limit via the keyword option limit. If you set limit to 0, there will be no limit.

Precompiling

While patterns are often cached, auto expanding patterns, such as 'file{a, b, c}' will have each individual permutation cached (up to the cache limit), but not the entire pattern. This is to prevent the cache from exploding with really large patterns such as {1..100}. Essentially, individual patterns are cached, but not the expansion of a pattern into many patterns.

If it is planned to reuse a pattern and the performance hit of recompiling is not desired, you can precompile a matcher object via glob.compile which returns a WcMatcher object.

>>> import wcmatch.glob as glob
>>> m = glob.compile('**/*.py', flags=glob.GLOBSTAR)
>>> m.match('wcmatch/__init__.py')
True
>>> m.filter(['wcmatch/__init__.py', 'wcmatch/glob.py', 'README.md'])
['wcmatch/__init__.py', 'wcmatch/glob.py']

API

glob.glob

def glob(patterns, *, flags=0, root_dir=None, dir_fd=None, limit=1000, exclude=None):

glob takes a pattern (or list of patterns), flags, and an optional root directory (string or path-like object) and/or directory file descriptor. It also allows configuring the max pattern limit. Exclusion patterns can be specified via the exclude parameter which takes a pattern or a list of patterns.When executed it will crawl the file system returning matching files.

>>> from wcmatch import glob
>>> glob.glob('**/*.md')
['docs/src/markdown/_snippets/abbr.md', 'docs/src/markdown/_snippets/links.md', 'docs/src/markdown/_snippets/refs.md', 'docs/src/markdown/changelog.md', 'docs/src/markdown/fnmatch.md', 'docs/src/markdown/glob.md', 'docs/src/markdown/index.md', 'docs/src/markdown/installation.md', 'docs/src/markdown/license.md', 'README.md']

Using a list, we can add exclusion patterns and also exclude directories and/or files:

>>> from wcmatch import glob
>>> glob.glob(['**/*.md', '!README.md', '!**/_snippets'], flags=glob.NEGATE)
['docs/src/markdown/changelog.md', 'docs/src/markdown/fnmatch.md', 'docs/src/markdown/glob.md', 'docs/src/markdown/index.md', 'docs/src/markdown/installation.md', 'docs/src/markdown/license.md']

When a glob pattern ends with a slash, it will only return directories:

>>> from wcmatch import glob
>>> glob.glob('**/')
['__pycache__/', 'docs/', 'docs/src/', 'docs/src/markdown/', 'docs/src/markdown/_snippets/', 'docs/theme/', 'requirements/', 'stuff/', 'tests/', 'tests/__pycache__/', 'wcmatch/', 'wcmatch/__pycache__/']

When providing a list, all patterns are run in the same context, but will not be run in the same pass. Each pattern is run in a separate pass, except for exclusion patterns (see the NEGATE flag) which are applied as filters to the inclusion patterns. Since each pattern is run in its own pass, it is possible for many directories to be researched multiple times. In Bash, duplicate files can be returned:

$ echo *.md README.md
LICENSE.md README.md README.md

And we see that Wildcard Match's glob behaves the same, except it only returns unique results.

>>> from wcmatch import glob
>>> glob.glob(['*.md', 'README.md'])
['LICENSE.md', 'README.md']

If we wanted to completely match Bash's results, we would turn off unique results with the NOUNIQUE flag.

>>> from wcmatch import glob
>>> glob.glob(['*.md', 'README.md'], flags=glob.NOUNIQUE)
['LICENSE.md', 'README.md', 'README.md']

And if we apply an exclusion pattern, since the patterns share the same context, the exclusion applies to both:

>>> from wcmatch import glob
>>> glob.glob(['*.md', , 'README.md', '!README.md'], flags=glob.NEGATE | glob.NOUNIQUE)
['LICENSE.md']

Features like BRACE and SPLIT actually take a single string and breaks them up into multiple patterns. These features, when enabled and used, will also exhibit this behavior:

>>> from wcmatch import glob
>>> glob.glob('{*,README}.md', flags=glob.BRACE | glob.NOUNIQUE)
['LICENSE.md', 'README.md', 'README.md']

This also aligns with Bash's behavior:

$ echo {*,README}.md
LICENSE.md README.md README.md

You can resolve user paths with ~ if the GLOBTILDE flag is enabled. You can also target specific users with ~user.

>>> from wcmatch import glob
>>> glob.glob('~', flags=glob.GLOBTILDE)
['/home/facelessuser']
>>> glob.glob('~root', flags=glob.GLOBTILDE)
['/root']

By default, glob uses the current working directory to evaluate relative patterns. Normally you'd have to use os.chdir('/new/path') to evaluate patterns relative to a different path. By setting root_dir parameter you can change the root path without using os.chdir.

>>> from wcmatch import glob
>>> glob.glob('*')
['appveyor.yml', 'docs', 'LICENSE.md', 'MANIFEST.in', 'mkdocs.yml', 'README.md', 'requirements', 'setup.cfg', 'setup.py', 'tests', 'tox.ini', 'wcmatch']
>>> glob.glob('*', root_dir='docs/src')
['dictionary', 'markdown']

Additionally, you can use dir_fd and specify a root directory with a directory file descriptor.

>>> import os
>>> from wcmatch import glob
>>> dir_fd = os.open('docs/src', os.O_RDONLY | os.O_DIRECTORY)
>>> glob.glob('*', dir_fd=dir_fd)
['markdown', 'dictionary']

glob.iglob

def iglob(patterns, *, flags=0, root_dir=None, dir_fd=None, limit=1000, exclude=None):

iglob is just like glob except it returns an iterator.

>>> from wcmatch import glob
>>> list(glob.iglob('**/*.md'))
['docs/src/markdown/_snippets/abbr.md', 'docs/src/markdown/_snippets/links.md', 'docs/src/markdown/_snippets/refs.md', 'docs/src/markdown/changelog.md', 'docs/src/markdown/fnmatch.md', 'docs/src/markdown/glob.md', 'docs/src/markdown/index.md', 'docs/src/markdown/installation.md', 'docs/src/markdown/license.md', 'README.md']

glob.globmatch

def globmatch(filename, patterns, *, flags=0, root_dir=None, dir_fd=None, limit=1000, exclude=None):

globmatch takes a file name (string or path-like object), a pattern (or list of patterns), flags, and an optional root directory and/or file descriptor. It also allows configuring the max pattern limit. Exclusion patterns can be specified via the exclude parameter which takes a pattern or a list of patterns. It will return a boolean indicating whether the file path was matched by the pattern(s).

>>> from wcmatch import glob
>>> glob.globmatch('some/path/test.txt', '**/*/@(*.txt|*.py)', flags=glob.EXTGLOB)
True

When applying multiple patterns, a file path matches if it matches any of the patterns:

>>> from wcmatch import glob
>>> glob.globmatch('some/path/test.txt', ['**/*/*.txt', '**/*/*.py'])
True

Exclusion patterns are allowed as well. When exclusion patterns are used in conjunction with other patterns, a path will be considered matched if one of the positive patterns match and none of the exclusion patterns match. If an exclusion pattern is given without any inclusion patterns, the pattern will match nothing. Exclusion patterns are meant to filter other patterns, not match anything by themselves.

>>> from wcmatch import glob
>>> glob.globmatch('some/path/test.py', '**|!**/*.txt', flags=glob.NEGATE | glob.GLOBSTAR | glob.SPLIT)
True
>>> glob.globmatch('some/path/test.txt', '**|!**/*.txt', flags=glob.NEGATE | glob.GLOBSTAR | glob.SPLIT)
False
>>> glob.globmatch('some/path/test.txt', ['*/*/*.txt', '!*/*/avoid.txt'], flags=glob.NEGATE)
True
>>> glob.globmatch('some/path/avoid.txt', ['*/*/*.txt', '!*/*/avoid.txt'], flags=glob.NEGATE)
False

As mentioned, exclusion patterns need to be applied to a inclusion pattern to work, but if it is desired, you can force exclusion patterns to assume all files should be filtered with the exclusion pattern(s) with the NEGATEALL flag. Essentially, it means if you use a pattern such as !*.md, it means if you use a pattern such as !*.md, it will assume two pattern were given: * and !*.md (where ** is specifically treated as if GLOBSTAR was enabled).

>>> from wcmatch import glob
>>> glob.globmatch('some/path/test.py', '!**/*.txt', flags=glob.NEGATE | glob.GLOBSTAR | glob.NEGATEALL)
True
>>> glob.globmatch('some/path/test.txt', '!**/*.txt', flags=glob.NEGATE | glob.GLOBSTAR | glob.NEGATEALL)
False

By default, globmatch and globfilter do not operate on the file system. This is to allow you to process paths from any source, even paths that are not on your current system. So if you are trying to explicitly match a directory with a pattern such as */, your path must end with a slash (my_directory/) to be recognized as a directory. It also won't be able to evaluate whether a directory is a symlink or not as it will have no way of checking. Here we see that globmatch fails to match the filepath as the pattern is explicitly looking for a directory and our filepath does not end with /.

>>> from wcmatch import glob
>>> glob.globmatch('docs', '*/')
False

If you would like for globmatch (or globfilter) to operate on your current filesystem directly, simply pass in the REALPATH flag. When enabled, the path under consideration will be analyzed and will use that context to determine if the file exists, if it is a directory, does it's context make sense compared to what the pattern is looking vs the current working directory, or if it has symlinks that should not be traversed by GLOBSTAR.

Here we use REALPATH and can see that globmatch now knows that doc is a directory.

>>> from wcmatch import glob
>>> glob.globmatch('docs', '*/', flags=glob.REALPATH)
True

It also can tell if a file doesn't exist or is out of scope compared to what is being asked. For instance, the below example fails because the pattern is looking for any folder that is relative to the current path, which /usr is not. When we disable REALPATH, it will match just fine. Both cases can be useful depending on how you plan to use globmatch.

>>> from wcmatch import glob
>>> glob.globmatch('/usr', '**/', flags=glob.G | glob.REALPATH)
False
>>> glob.globmatch('/usr', '**/', flags=glob.G)
True

If you are using REALPATH and want to evaluate the paths relative to a different directory, you can set the root_dir parameter.

>>> from wcmatch import glob
>>> glob.globmatch('markdown', 'markdown', flags=glob.REALPATH)
False
>>> glob.globmatch('markdown', 'markdown', flags=glob.REALPATH, root_dir='docs/src')
True

Additionally, you could also provide a root directory using a file descriptor.

>>> import os
>>> from wcmatch import glob
>>> dir_fd = os.open('docs/src', os.O_RDONLY | os.O_DIRECTORY)
>>> glob.globmatch('markdown', 'markdown', flags=glob.REALPATH)
False
>>> glob.globmatch('markdown', 'markdown', flags=glob.REALPATH, dir_fd=dir_fd)
True

glob.globfilter

def globfilter(filenames, patterns, *, flags=0, root_dir=None, dir_fd=None, limit=1000, method=None):

globfilter takes a list of file paths (strings or path-like objects), a pattern (or list of patterns), flags, and an optional root directory and/or directory file descriptor. It also allows configuring the max pattern limit. Exclusion patterns can be specified via the exclude parameter which takes a pattern or a list of patterns.It returns a list of all files paths that matched the pattern(s). The same logic used for globmatch is used for globfilter, albeit more efficient for processing multiple files.

>>> from wcmatch import glob
>>> glob.globfilter(['some/path/a.txt', 'b.txt', 'another/path/c.py'], '**/*.txt')
['some/path/a.txt', 'b.txt']

Like globmatch, globfilter does not operate directly on the file system, with all the caveats associated. But you can enable the REALPATH flag and globfilter will use the filesystem to gain context such as: whether the file exists, whether it is a directory or not, or whether it has symlinks that should not be traversed by GLOBSTAR. See globmatch for examples.

glob.translate

def translate(patterns, *, flags=0, limit=1000, exclude=None):

translate takes a file pattern (or list of patterns) and flags. It also allows configuring the max pattern limit. Exclusion patterns can be specified via the exclude parameter which takes a pattern or a list of patterns. It returns two lists: one for inclusion patterns and one for exclusion patterns. The lists contain the regular expressions used for matching the given patterns. It should be noted that a file is considered matched if it matches at least one inclusion pattern and matches none of the exclusion patterns.

>>> from wcmatch import glob
>>> glob.translate('**/*.{py,txt}')
(['^(?s:(?=[^/])(?!(?:\\.{1,2})(?:$|[/]))(?:(?!\\.)[^/]*?)?[/]+(?=[^/])(?!(?:\\.{1,2})(?:$|[/]))(?:(?!\\.)[^/]*?)?\\.\\{py,txt\\}[/]*?)$'], [])
>>> glob.translate('**|!**/*.{py,txt}', flags=glob.NEGATE | glob.SPLIT)
(['^(?s:(?=[^/])(?!(?:\\.{1,2})(?:$|[/]))(?:(?!\\.)[^/]*?)?[/]*?)$'], ['^(?s:(?=[^/])(?!(?:\\.{1,2})(?:$|[/]))[^/]*?[/]+(?=[^/])(?!(?:\\.{1,2})(?:$|[/]))[^/]*?\\.\\{py,txt\\}[/]*?)$'])

The main goal of translate is to return a regex that matches a file path. Advanced regex features, such as extracting specific groups, are not really the goal, but, when using EXTMATCH patterns, extend groups will be returned as a capturing group pattern and can be utilized if that is found to be helpful. Advanced regex features such as naming groups does not currently fit into the pattern matching syntax is not currently planned.

While in regex, patterns like r'(a)+' would capture only the last character, even though multiple where matched, we wrap the entire group to be captured: '+(a)' → r'((a)+)'.

>>> from wcmatch import glob
>>> import re
>>> gpat = glob.translate("@(file)+([[:digit:]])@(.*)", flags=glob.EXTGLOB)
>>> pat = re.compile(gpat[0][0])
>>> pat.match('file33.test.txt').groups()
('file', '33', '.test.txt')

glob.compile

def compile(patterns, *, flags=0, limit=1000, exclude=None):

The compile function takes a file pattern (or list of patterns) and flags. It also allows configuring the max pattern limit. Exclusion patterns can be specified via the exclude parameter which takes a pattern or a list of patterns. It returns a WcMatcher object which can match or filter file paths depending on which method is called.

>>> import wcmatch.glob as glob
>>> m = glob.compile('**/*.py', flags=glob.GLOBSTAR)
>>> m.match('wcmatch/__init__.py')
True
>>> m.filter(['wcmatch/__init__.py', 'wcmatch/glob.py', 'README.md'])
['wcmatch/__init__.py', 'wcmatch/glob.py']

glob.WcMatcher

The WcMatcher class is returned when a pattern is precompiled with compile. It has two methods: match and filter.

def match(self, filename, *, root_dir=None, dir_fd=None):

This match method allows for matching against a precompiled pattern.

>>> import wcmatch.glob as glob
>>> m = glob.compile('**/*.py', flags=glob.GLOBSTAR)
>>> m.match('wcmatch/__init__.py')
True

def filter(self, filenames, *, root_dir=None, dir_fd=None):

The filter method allows for filtering paths against a precompiled pattern.

>>> import wcmatch.glob as glob
>>> m = glob.compile('**/*.py', flags=glob.GLOBSTAR)
>>> m.filter(['wcmatch/__init__.py', 'wcmatch/glob.py', 'README.md'])
['wcmatch/__init__.py', 'wcmatch/glob.py']

glob.escape

def escape(pattern, unix=None):

The escape function will conservatively escape -, !, *, ?, (, ), [, ], |, {, }, and \ with backslashes, regardless of what feature is or is not enabled. It is meant to escape path parts (filenames, Windows drives, UNC sharepoints) or full paths.

>>> from wcmatch import glob
>>> glob.escape('some/path?/**file**{}.txt')
'some/path\\?/\\*\\*file\\*\\*\\{}.txt'
>>> glob.globmatch('some/path?/**file**{}.txt', glob.escape('some/path?/**file**{}.txt'))
True

escape can also handle Windows style paths with / or \ path separators. It is usually recommended to use / as Windows backslashes are only supported via a special escape, but \ will be expanded to an escaped backslash (represented in a raw string as r'\\' or a normal string as '\\\\').

>>> from wmcatch import glob
>>> glob.escape('some\\path?\\**file**{}.txt', unix=False)
'some\\\\path\\?\\\\\\*\\*file\\*\\*\\{\\}.txt'
>>> glob.globmatch('some\\path?\\**file**{}.txt', glob.escape('some\\path?\\**file**{}.txt'), flags=glob.FORCEWIN)
True
>>> glob.escape('some/path?/**file**{}.txt', unix=False)
'some/path\\?/\\*\\*file\\*\\*\\{\\}.txt'
>>> glob.globmatch('some\\path?\\**file**{}.txt', glob.escape('some/path?/**file**{}.txt'), flags=glob.FORCEWIN)
True

On a Windows system, meta characters are not processed in drives or UNC sharepoints except for pattern expansion meta characters. { and } (when using BRACE) and | (when using SPLIT) are the only meta characters that can affect drives and UNC sharepoints; therefore, they are the only characters that need to be escaped. escape, when it detects or is informed that it is processing a Windows path, escape will properly find and handle drives and UNC sharepoints.

>>> from wmcatch import glob
>>> glob.escape('//./Volume{b75e2c83-0000-0000-0000-602f00000000}\Test\Foo.txt', unix=False)
'//./Volume\\{b75e2c83-0000-0000-0000-602f00000000\\}\\\\Test\\\\Foo.txt'

escape will detect the system it is running on and pick Windows escape logic or Linux/Unix logic. Since globmatch allows you to match Unix style paths on a Windows system and vice versa, you can force Unix style escaping or Windows style escaping via the unix parameter. When unix is None, the escape style will be detected, when unix is True Linux/Unix style escaping will be used, and when unix is False Windows style escaping will be used.

>>> glob.escape('some/path?/**file**{}.txt', unix=True)

glob.is_magic

def is_magic(pattern, *, flags=0):
    """Check if the pattern is likely to be magic."""

This checks a given path or pattern or to see if "magic" symbols are present or not. The check is based on the enabled features via flags. Paths and patterns are expected to be/target full paths, full filenames, full drive names, or full UNC sharepoints. If is_magic is run on a Windows path it will always flag it as "magic" unless you convert the directory separators to / as \ is a "magic" symbol.

>>> glob.is_magic('test')
False
>>> glob.is_magic('[test]ing?')
True

When is_magic is called, the system it is called on is detected automatically and/or inferred from flags such as FORCEUNIX or FORCEWIN. If the pattern is checked against a Windows system, UNC sharepoints will be detected and treated differently. Wildcard Match cannot detect and glob all possible connected sharepoints, so they are treated differently and cannot contain magic except in three cases:

1. The drive or sharepoint is using backslashes as backslashes are treated as magic.
2. BRACE is enabled and either { or } are found in the drive name or UNC sharepoint.
3. SPLIT is enabled and | is found in the drive name or UNC sharepoint.

>>> glob.is_magic('//?/UNC/server/mount{}/', flags=glob.FORCEWIN)
False
>>> glob.is_magic('//?/UNC/server/mount{}/', flags=glob.FORCEWIN | glob.BRACE)
True

The table below illustrates which symbols are searched for based on the given feature. Each feature adds to the "default". In the case of NEGATE, if MINUSNEGATE is also enabled, MINUSNEGATE's symbols will be searched instead of NEGATE's symbols.

Flags

glob.CASE, glob.C

CASE forces case sensitivity. CASE has higher priority than IGNORECASE.

On Windows, drive letters (C:) and UNC sharepoints (//host/share) portions of a path will still be treated case insensitively, but the rest of the path will have case sensitive logic applied.

glob.IGNORECASE, glob.I

IGNORECASE forces case insensitivity. CASE has higher priority than IGNORECASE.

glob.RAWCHARS, glob.R

RAWCHARS causes string character syntax to be parsed in raw strings: r'\u0040' → r'@'. This will handle standard string escapes and Unicode including r'\N{CHAR NAME}'.

glob.NEGATE, glob.N

NEGATE causes patterns that start with ! to be treated as exclusion patterns. A pattern of !*.py exclude any Python files. Exclusion patterns cannot be used by themselves though, and must be paired with a normal, inclusion pattern, either by utilizing the SPLIT flag, or providing multiple patterns in a list. Assuming the SPLIT flag, this means using it in a pattern such as inclusion|!exclusion.

If it is desired, you can force exclusion patterns, when no inclusion pattern is provided, to assume all files match unless the file matches the excluded pattern. This is done with the NEGATEALL flag.

NEGATE enables DOTGLOB in all exclude patterns, this cannot be disabled. This will not affect the inclusion patterns.

If NEGATE is set and exclusion patterns are passed via a matching or glob function's exclude parameter, NEGATE will be ignored and the exclude patterns will be used instead. Either exclude or NEGATE should be used, not both.

glob.NEGATEALL, glob.A

NEGATEALL can force exclusion patterns, when no inclusion pattern is provided, to assume all files match unless the file matches the excluded pattern. Essentially, it means if you use a pattern such as !*.md, it will assume two patterns were given: ** and !*.md, where !*.md is applied to the results of **, and ** is specifically treated as if GLOBSTAR was enabled.

Dot files will not be returned unless DOTGLOB is enabled. Symlinks will also not be traversed unless FOLLOW is enabled.

glob.MINUSNEGATE, glob.M

When MINUSNEGATE is used with NEGATE, exclusion patterns are recognized by a pattern starting with - instead of !. This plays nice with the extended glob feature which already uses ! in patterns such as !(...).

glob.GLOBSTAR, glob.G

GLOBSTAR enables the feature where ** matches zero or more directories.

glob.GLOBSTARLONG, glob.GL

When GLOBSTARLONG is enabled *** will act like **, but will cause symlinks to be traversed as well.

Enabling GLOBSTARLONG automatically enables GLOBSTAR.

FOLLOW will be ignored and *** will be required to traverse a symlink. But it should be noted that when using MATCHBASE and FOLLOW with GLOBSTARLONG, that FOLLOW will cause the implicit leading ** that MATCHBASE applies to act as an implicit ***.

glob.FOLLOW, glob.L

FOLLOW will cause GLOBSTAR patterns (**) to traverse symlink directories.

FOLLOW will have no affect if using GLOBSTARLONG and an explicit *** will be required to traverse a symlink. FOLLOW will have an affect if enabled with GLOBSTARLONG and MATCHBASE and will cause the implicit leading ** that MATCHBASE applies to act as an implicit ***.

glob.REALPATH, glob.P

In the past, only glob and iglob operated on the filesystem, but with REALPATH, other functions will now operate on the filesystem as well: globmatch and globfilter.

Normally, functions such as globmatch would simply match a path with regular expression and return the result. The functions were not concerned with whether the path existed or not. It didn't care if it was even valid for the operating system.

REALPATH forces globmatch and globfilter to treat the string path as a real file path for the given system it is running on. It will augment the patterns used to match files and enable additional logic so that the path must meet the following in order to match:

• Path must exist.
• Directories that are symlinks will not be traversed by GLOBSTAR patterns (**) unless the FOLLOW flag is enabled.
• If GLOBSTARLONG is enabled, *** will traverse symlinks, FOLLOW will be ignored except if MATCHBASE is also enabled, in that case, the implicit leading ** added by MATCHBASE will act as ***.
• When presented with a pattern where the match must be a directory, but the file path being compared doesn't indicate the file is a directory with a trailing slash, the command will look at the filesystem to determine if it is a directory.
• Paths must match in relation to the current working directory unless the pattern is constructed in a way to indicates an absolute path.

Since REALPATH causes the file system to be referenced when matching a path, flags such as FORCEUNIX and FORCEWIN are not allowed with this flag and will be ignored.

glob.DOTGLOB, glob.D

By default, glob and globmatch will not match file or directory names that start with dot . unless matched with a literal dot. DOTGLOB allows the meta characters (such as *) to glob dots like any other character. Dots will not be matched in [], *, or ?.

Alternatively DOTMATCH will also be accepted for consistency with the other provided libraries. Both flags are exactly the same and are provided as a convenience in case the user finds one more intuitive than the other since DOTGLOB is often the name used in Bash.

glob.NODOTDIR, glob.Z

NOTDOTDIR fundamentally changes how glob patterns deal with . and ... This is great if you'd prefer a more Zsh feel when it comes to special directory matching. When NODOTDIR is enabled, "magic" patterns, such as .*, will not match the special directories of . and ... In order to match these special directories, you will have to use literal glob patterns of . and ... This can be used in all glob API functions that accept flags, and will affect inclusion patterns as well as exclusion patterns.

>>> from wcmatch import glob
>>> glob.globfilter(['.', '..'], '.*')
['.', '..']
>>> glob.globfilter(['.', '..'], '.*', flags=glob.NODOTDIR)
[]
>>> glob.globfilter(['.', '..'], '.', flags=glob.NODOTDIR)
['.']
>>> glob.globfilter(['.', '..'], '..', flags=glob.NODOTDIR)
['..']

Also affects exclusion patterns:

>>> from wcmatch import glob
>>> glob.glob(['..', '!.*'], flags=glob.NEGATE)
[]
>>> glob.glob(['..', '!.*'], flags=glob.NEGATE | glob.NODOTDIR)
['..']
>>> glob.glob(['..', '!..'], flags=glob.NEGATE | glob.NODOTDIR)
[]

glob.SCANDOTDIR, glob.SD

SCANDOTDIR controls the directory scanning behavior of glob and iglob. The directory scanner of these functions do not return . and .. in their results. This means that unless you use an explicit . or .. in your glob pattern, . and .. will not be returned. When SCANDOTDIR is enabled, . and .. will be returned when a directory is scanned causing "magic" patterns, such as .*, to match . and ...

This only controls the directory scanning behavior and not how glob patterns behave. Exclude patterns, which filter the returned results via NEGATE, can still match . and .. with "magic" patterns such as .* regardless of whether SCANDOTDIR is enabled or not. It will also have no affect on globmatch. To fundamentally change how glob patterns behave, you can use NODOTDIR.

>>> from wcmatch import glob
>>> glob.glob('.*')
['.codecov.yml', '.tox', '.coverage', '.coveragerc', '.gitignore', '.github', '.pyspelling.yml', '.git']
>>> glob.glob('.*', flags=glob.SCANDOTDIR)
['.', '..', '.codecov.yml', '.tox', '.coverage', '.coveragerc', '.gitignore', '.github', '.pyspelling.yml', '.git']

glob.EXTGLOB, glob.E

EXTGLOB enables extended pattern matching which includes special pattern lists such as +(...), *(...), ?(...), etc. Pattern lists allow for multiple patterns within them separated by |. See the globbing syntax overview for more information.

Alternatively EXTMATCH will also be accepted for consistency with the other provided libraries. Both flags are exactly the same and are provided as a convenience in case the user finds one more intuitive than the other since EXTGLOB is often the name used in Bash.

glob.BRACE, glob.B

BRACE enables Bash style brace expansion: a{b,{c,d}} → ab ac ad. Brace expansion is applied before anything else. When applied, a pattern will be expanded into multiple patterns. Each pattern will then be parsed separately.

Duplicate patterns will be discarded¹ by default, and glob and iglob will return only unique results. If you need glob or iglob to behave more like Bash and return all results, you can set NOUNIQUE. NOUNIQUE has no effect on matching functions such as globmatch and globfilter.

For simple patterns, it may make more sense to use EXTGLOB which will only generate a single pattern which will perform much better: @(ab|ac|ad).

glob.SPLIT, glob.S

SPLIT is used to take a string of multiple patterns that are delimited by | and split them into separate patterns. This is provided to help with some interfaces that might need a way to define multiple patterns in one input. It pairs really well with EXTGLOB and takes into account sequences ([]) and extended patterns (*(...)) and will not parse | within them. You can also escape the delimiters if needed: \|.

Duplicate patterns will be discarded¹ by default, and glob and iglob will return only unique results. If you need glob or iglob to behave more like Bash and return all results, you can set NOUNIQUE. NOUNIQUE has no effect on matching functions such as globmatch and globfilter.

While SPLIT is not as powerful as BRACE, it's syntax is very easy to use, and when paired with EXTGLOB, it feels natural and comes a bit closer. It is also much harder to create massive expansions of patterns with it, except when paired with BRACE. See BRACE and its warnings related to pairing it with SPLIT.

>>> from wcmatch import glob
>>> glob.globmatch('test.txt', '*.txt|*.py', flags=fnmatch.SPLIT)
True
>>> glob.globmatch('test.py', '*.txt|*.py', flags=fnmatch.SPLIT)
True

glob.NOUNIQUE, glob.Q

NOUNIQUE is used to disable Wildcard Match's unique results return. This mimics Bash's output behavior if that is desired.

>>> from wcmatch import glob
>>> glob.glob('{*,README}.md', flags=glob.BRACE | glob.NOUNIQUE)
['LICENSE.md', 'README.md', 'README.md']
>>> glob.glob('{*,README}.md', flags=glob.BRACE )
['LICENSE.md', 'README.md']

By default, only unique paths are returned in glob and iglob. Normally this is what a programmer would want from such a library, so input patterns are reduced to unique patterns¹ to reduce excessive matching with redundant patterns and excessive crawls through the file system. Also, as two different patterns that have been fed into glob may match the same file, the results are also filtered as to not return the duplicates.

Unique results is are accomplished by filtering out duplicate patterns and by retaining an internal set of returned files to determine duplicates. The internal set of files is not retained if only a single, inclusive pattern is provided. Exclusive patterns via NEGATE will not trigger the logic. Singular inclusive patterns that use pattern expansions due to BRACE or SPLIT will act as if multiple patterns were provided, and will trigger the duplicate filtering logic. This is mentioned as functions such as iglob, which normally are expected to not retain results in memory, will be forced to retain a set to ensure unique results if multiple inclusive patterns are provided.

NOUNIQUE disables all of the aforementioned "unique" optimizations, but only for glob and iglob. Functions like globmatch and globfilter would get no benefit from disabling "unique" optimizations as they only match what they are given.

glob.GLOBTILDE, glob.T

GLOBTILDE allows for user path expansion via ~. You can get the current user path by using ~ at the start of a path. ~ can be used as the entire pattern, or it must be followed by a directory slash: ~/more-pattern.

To specify a specific user, you can explicitly specify a user name via ~user. If additional pattern is needed, the user name must be followed by a directory slash: ~user/more-pattern.

>>> from wcmatch import glob
>>> glob.glob('~', flags=glob.GLOBTILDE)
['/home/facelessuser']
>>> glob.glob('~root', flags=glob.GLOBTILDE)
['/root']

GLOBTILDE can also be used in things like globfilter or globmatch, but you must be using REALPATH or the user path will not be expanded.

from wcmatch import glob
>>> glob.globmatch('/home/facelessuser/', '~', flags=glob.GLOBTILDE | glob.REALPATH)
True

glob.MARK, glob.K

MARK ensures that glob and iglob to return all directories with a trailing slash. This makes it very clear which paths are directories and allows you to save calling os.path.isdir as you can simply check for a path separator at the end of the path. This flag only applies to calls to glob or iglob.

If you are passing the returned files from glob to globfilter or globmatch, it is important to ensure directory paths have trailing slashes as these functions have no way of telling the path is a directory otherwise (except when REALPATH is enabled). If you have REALPATH enabled, ensuring the files have trailing slashes can still save you a call to os.path.isdir as REALPATH resorts to calling it if there is no trailing slash.

>>> from wcmatch import glob
>>> glob.glob('*', flags=glob.MARK)
['appveyor.yml', 'base.patch', 'basematch.diff', 'docs/', 'LICENSE.md', 'MANIFEST.in', 'mkdocs.yml', 'README.md', 'requirements/', 'setup.cfg', 'setup.py', 'tests/', 'tools/', 'tox.ini', 'wcmatch/']
>>> glob.glob('*')
['appveyor.yml', 'base.patch', 'basematch.diff', 'docs', 'LICENSE.md', 'MANIFEST.in', 'mkdocs.yml', 'README.md', 'requirements', 'setup.cfg', 'setup.py', 'tests', 'tools', 'tox.ini', 'wcmatch']

glob.MATCHBASE, glob.X

MATCHBASE, when a pattern has no slashes in it, will cause glob and iglob to seek for any file anywhere in the tree with a matching basename. When enabled for globfilter and globmatch, any path whose basename matches. MATCHBASE is sensitive to files and directories that start with . and will not match such files and directories if DOTGLOB is not enabled.

>>> from wcmatch import glob
>>> glob.glob('*.txt', flags=glob.MATCHBASE)
['docs/src/dictionary/en-custom.txt', 'docs/src/markdown/_snippets/abbr.txt', 'docs/src/markdown/_snippets/links.txt', 'docs/src/markdown/_snippets/posix.txt', 'docs/src/markdown/_snippets/refs.txt', 'requirements/docs.txt', 'requirements/lint.txt', 'requirements/setup.txt', 'requirements/test.txt', 'requirements/tools.txt']

glob.NODIR, glob.O

NODIR will cause glob, iglob, globmatch, and globfilter to return only matched files.

>>> from wcmatch import glob
>>> glob.glob('*', flags=glob.NODIR)
['appveyor.yml', 'LICENSE.md', 'MANIFEST.in', 'mkdocs.yml', 'README.md', 'setup.cfg', 'setup.py', 'spell.log', 'tox.ini']
>>> glob.glob('*')
['appveyor.yml', 'docs', 'LICENSE.md', 'MANIFEST.in', 'mkdocs.yml', 'README.md', 'requirements', 'setup.cfg', 'setup.py', 'spell.log', 'tests', 'tools', 'tox.ini', 'wcmatch']

glob.FORCEWIN, glob.W

FORCEWIN will force Windows path and case logic to be used on Linux/Unix systems. It will also cause slashes to be normalized and Windows drive syntax to be handled special. This is great if you need to match Windows specific paths on a Linux/Unix system. This will only work on commands that do not access the file system: translate, globmatch, globfilter, etc. These flags will not work with glob or iglob. It also will not work when using the REALPATH flag with things like globmatch and globfilter.

If FORCEWIN is used along side FORCEUNIX, both will be ignored.

glob.FORCEUNIX, glob.U

FORCEUNIX will force Linux/Unix path and case logic to be used on Windows systems. This is great if you need to match Linux/Unix specific paths on a Windows system. This will only work on commands that do not access the file system: translate, globmatch, globfilter, etc. These flags will not work with glob or iglob. It also will not work when using the REALPATH flag with things like globmatch and globfilter.

When using FORCEUNIX, the paths are assumed to be case sensitive, but you can use IGNORECASE to use case insensitivity.

If FORCEUNIX is used along side FORCEWIN, both will be ignored.