glob(n) Tcl Built-In Commands glob(n)______________________________________________________________________________NAMEglob - Return names of files that match patterns
SYNOPSISglob ?switches? ?pattern ...?
_________________________________________________________________DESCRIPTION
This command performs file name “globbing” in a fashion similar to the
csh shell or bash 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.
OPTIONS
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 con‐
junction with -path, which is used to allow searching for com‐
plete file paths whose names may contain glob-sensitive charac‐
ters.
-join The remaining pattern arguments, after option processing, 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 exam‐
ple, 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 (sym‐
bolic 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. Unrec‐
ognized types, or specifications of multiple MacOS types/cre‐
ators 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 per‐
missions. 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 -.
GLOBBING PATTERNS
The pattern arguments may contain any of the following special charac‐
ters, which are a superset of those supported by string match:
? 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 sub-patterns 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 “/” charac‐
ters 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 fol‐
lowed immediately by “/” then the value of the HOME environment vari‐
able 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 direc‐
tory.
WINDOWS PORTABILITY ISSUES
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 accepted patterns like “.../” and
“..../” for successively higher up parent directories, but later ver‐
sions of Windows do not accept these forms.
Since the backslash character has a special meaning to the glob com‐
mand, glob patterns containing Windows style path separators need spe‐
cial 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”.
EXAMPLES
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}*
SEE ALSOfile(n)KEYWORDS
exist, file, glob, pattern
Tcl 8.3 glob(n)
