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GLOB(3) Linux Programmer's Manual GLOB(3)
NAME
glob, globfree - find pathnames matching a pattern, free memory from glob()
SYNOPSIS
#include <glob.h>
int glob(const char *pattern, int flags,
int (*errfunc) (const char *epath, int eerrno),
glob_t *pglob);
void globfree(glob_t *pglob);
DESCRIPTION
The glob() function searches for all the pathnames matching pattern according to the rules
used by the shell (see glob(7)). No tilde expansion or parameter substitution is done; if
you want these, use wordexp(3).
The globfree() function frees the dynamically allocated storage from an earlier call to
glob().
The results of a glob() call are stored in the structure pointed to by pglob. This struc‐
ture is of type glob_t (declared in <glob.h>) and includes the following elements defined
by POSIX.2 (more may be present as an extension):
typedef struct {
size_t gl_pathc; /* Count of paths matched so far */
char **gl_pathv; /* List of matched pathnames. */
size_t gl_offs; /* Slots to reserve in gl_pathv. */
} glob_t;
Results are stored in dynamically allocated storage.
The argument flags is made up of the bitwise OR of zero or more the following symbolic
constants, which modify the behavior of glob():
GLOB_ERR
Return upon a read error (because a directory does not have read permission, for
example). By default, glob() attempts carry on despite errors, reading all of the
directories that it can.
GLOB_MARK
Append a slash to each path which corresponds to a directory.
GLOB_NOSORT
Don't sort the returned pathnames. The only reason to do this is to save process‐
ing time. By default, the returned pathnames are sorted.
GLOB_DOOFFS
Reserve pglob->gl_offs slots at the beginning of the list of strings in
pglob->pathv. The reserved slots contain null pointers.
GLOB_NOCHECK
If no pattern matches, return the original pattern. By default, glob() returns
GLOB_NOMATCH if there are no matches.
GLOB_APPEND
Append the results of this call to the vector of results returned by a previous
call to glob(). Do not set this flag on the first invocation of glob().
GLOB_NOESCAPE
Don't allow backslash ('\') to be used as an escape character. Normally, a back‐
slash can be used to quote the following character, providing a mechanism to turn
off the special meaning metacharacters.
flags may also include any of the following, which are GNU extensions and not defined by
POSIX.2:
GLOB_PERIOD
Allow a leading period to be matched by metacharacters. By default, metacharacters
can't match a leading period.
GLOB_ALTDIRFUNC
Use alternative functions pglob->gl_closedir, pglob->gl_readdir, pglob->gl_opendir,
pglob->gl_lstat, and pglob->gl_stat for filesystem access instead of the normal
library functions.
GLOB_BRACE
Expand csh(1) style brace expressions of the form {a,b}. Brace expressions can be
nested. Thus, for example, specifying the pattern "{foo/{,cat,dog},bar}" would
return the same results as four separate glob() calls using the strings: "foo/",
"foo/cat", "foo/dog", and "bar".
GLOB_NOMAGIC
If the pattern contains no metacharacters, then it should be returned as the sole
matching word, even if there is no file with that name.
GLOB_TILDE
Carry out tilde expansion. If a tilde ('~') is the only character in the pattern,
or an initial tilde is followed immediately by a slash ('/'), then the home direc‐
tory of the caller is substituted for the tilde. If an initial tilde is followed
by a username (e.g., "~andrea/bin"), then the tilde and username are substituted by
the home directory of that user. If the username is invalid, or the home directory
cannot be determined, then no substitution is performed.
GLOB_TILDE_CHECK
This provides behavior similar to that of GLOB_TILDE. The difference is that if
the username is invalid, or the home directory cannot be determined, then instead
of using the pattern itself as the name, glob() returns GLOB_NOMATCH to indicate an
error.
GLOB_ONLYDIR
This is a hint to glob() that the caller is interested only in directories that
match the pattern. If the implementation can easily determine file-type informa‐
tion, then nondirectory files are not returned to the caller. However, the caller
must still check that returned files are directories. (The purpose of this flag is
merely to optimize performance when the caller is interested only in directories.)
If errfunc is not NULL, it will be called in case of an error with the arguments epath, a
pointer to the path which failed, and eerrno, the value of errno as returned from one of
the calls to opendir(3), readdir(3), or stat(2). If errfunc returns nonzero, or if
GLOB_ERR is set, glob() will terminate after the call to errfunc.
Upon successful return, pglob->gl_pathc contains the number of matched pathnames and
pglob->gl_pathv contains a pointer to the list of pointers to matched pathnames. The list
of pointers is terminated by a null pointer.
It is possible to call glob() several times. In that case, the GLOB_APPEND flag has to be
set in flags on the second and later invocations.
As a GNU extension, pglob->gl_flags is set to the flags specified, ored with GLOB_MAGCHAR
if any metacharacters were found.
RETURN VALUE
On successful completion, glob() returns zero. Other possible returns are:
GLOB_NOSPACE
for running out of memory,
GLOB_ABORTED
for a read error, and
GLOB_NOMATCH
for no found matches.
CONFORMING TO
POSIX.2, POSIX.1-2001.
NOTES
The structure elements gl_pathc and gl_offs are declared as size_t in glibc 2.1, as they
should be according to POSIX.2, but are declared as int in glibc 2.0.
BUGS
The glob() function may fail due to failure of underlying function calls, such as mal‐
loc(3) or opendir(3). These will store their error code in errno.
EXAMPLE
One example of use is the following code, which simulates typing
ls -l *.c ../*.c
in the shell:
glob_t globbuf;
globbuf.gl_offs = 2;
glob("*.c", GLOB_DOOFFS, NULL, &globbuf);
glob("../*.c", GLOB_DOOFFS | GLOB_APPEND, NULL, &globbuf);
globbuf.gl_pathv[0] = "ls";
globbuf.gl_pathv[1] = "-l";
execvp("ls", &globbuf.gl_pathv[0]);
SEE ALSO
ls(1), sh(1), stat(2), exec(3), fnmatch(3), malloc(3), opendir(3), readdir(3), wordexp(3),
glob(7)
COLOPHON
This page is part of release 3.74 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the
project, information about reporting bugs, and the latest version of this page, can be
found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
GNU 2014-08-19 GLOB(3)
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