NAME

Text::Glob - match globbing patterns against text

SYNOPSIS

 use Text::Glob qw( match_glob glob_to_regex );

 print "matched\n" if match_glob( "foo.*", "foo.bar" );

 # prints foo.bar and foo.baz
 my $regex = glob_to_regex( "foo.*" );
 for ( qw( foo.bar foo.baz foo bar ) ) {
     print "matched: $_\n" if /$regex/;
 }

DESCRIPTION

Text::Glob implements glob(3) style matching that can be used to match against text, rather than fetching names from a filesystem. If you want to do full file globbing use the File::Glob module instead.

Routines

match_glob( $glob, @things_to_test )

Returns the list of things which match the glob from the source list.

glob_to_regex( $glob )

Returns a compiled regex which is the equivalent of the globbing pattern.

glob_to_regex_string( $glob )

Returns a regex string which is the equivalent of the globbing pattern.

SYNTAX

The following metacharacters and rules are respected.

* - match zero or more characters

a* matches a, aa, aaaa and many many more.

? - match exactly one character

a? matches aa, but not a, or aaa

Character sets/ranges

example.[ch] matches example.c and example.h

demo.[a-c] matches demo.a, demo.b, and demo.c

alternation

example.{foo,bar,baz} matches example.foo, example.bar, and example.baz

leading . must be explicitly matched

*.foo does not match .bar.foo. For this you must either specify the leading . in the glob pattern (.*.foo), or set $Text::Glob::strict_leading_dot to a false value while compiling the regex.

* and ? do not match the seperator (i.e. do not match /)

*.foo does not match bar/baz.foo. For this you must either explicitly match the / in the glob (*/*.foo), or set $Text::Glob::strict_wildcard_slash to a false value while compiling the regex, or change the seperator that Text::Glob uses by setting $Text::Glob::seperator to an alternative value while compiling the the regex.

BUGS

The code uses qr// to produce compiled regexes, therefore this module requires perl version 5.005_03 or newer.

AUTHOR

Richard Clamp <richardc@unixbeard.net>

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (C) 2002, 2003, 2006, 2007 Richard Clamp. All Rights Reserved.

This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

SEE ALSO

File::Glob, glob(3)