WILDMAT(3)WILDMAT(3)NAMEwildmat - perform shell-style wildcard matching
SYNOPSIS
int
wildmat(text, pattern)
char *text;
char *pattern;
DESCRIPTION
Wildmat compares the text against the pattern and returns non-zero if
the pattern matches the text. The pattern is interpreted according to
rules similar to shell filename wildcards, and not as a full regular
expression such as those handled by the grep(1) family of programs or
the regex(3) or regexp(3) set of routines.
The pattern is interpreted as follows:
\x Turns off the special meaning of x and matches it directly; this
is used mostly before a question mark or asterisk, and is not
special inside square brackets.
? Matches any single character.
* Matches any sequence of zero or more characters.
[x...y]
Matches any single character specified by the set x...y. A
minus sign may be used to indicate a range of characters. That
is, [0-5abc] is a shorthand for [012345abc]. More than one
range may appear inside a character set; [0-9a-zA-Z._] matches
almost all of the legal characters for a host name. The close
bracket, ], may be used if it is the first character in the set.
The minus sign, -, may be used if it is either the first or last
character in the set.
[^x...y]
This matches any character not in the set x...y, which is inter‐
preted as described above. For example, [^]-] matches any char‐
acter other than a close bracket or minus sign.
HISTORY
Written by Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> in 1986, and posted to Usenet
several times since then, most notably in comp.sources.misc in March,
1991.
Lars Mathiesen <thorinn@diku.dk> enhanced the multi-asterisk failure
mode in early 1991.
Rich and Lars increased the efficiency of star patterns and reposted it
to comp.sources.misc in April, 1991.
Robert Elz <kre@munnari.oz.au> added minus sign and close bracket han‐
dling in June, 1991.
This is revision 1.10, dated 1992/04/03.
SEE ALSOgrep(1), regex(3), regexp(3).
WILDMAT(3)