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GLOB(3)

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NAME    [Toc]    [Back]

     glob, globfree -- generate pathnames matching a pattern

LIBRARY    [Toc]    [Back]

     Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS    [Toc]    [Back]

     #include <glob.h>

     int
     glob(const char *pattern, int flags, int (*errfunc)(const char *, int),
	 glob_t *pglob);

     void
     globfree(glob_t *pglob);

DESCRIPTION    [Toc]    [Back]

     The glob() function is a pathname generator that implements the rules for
     file name pattern matching used by the shell.

     The include file <glob.h> defines the structure type glob_t, which contains
 at least the following fields:

     typedef struct {
	     int gl_pathc;	     /* count of total paths so far */
	     int gl_matchc;	     /* count of paths matching pattern */
	     int gl_offs;	     /* reserved at beginning of gl_pathv */
	     int gl_flags;	     /* returned flags */
	     char **gl_pathv;	     /* list of paths matching pattern */
     } glob_t;

     The argument pattern is a pointer to a pathname pattern to be expanded.
     The glob() argument matches all accessible pathnames against the pattern
     and creates a list of the pathnames that match.  In order to have access
     to a pathname, glob() requires search permission on every component of a
     path except the last and read permission on each directory of any filename
 component of pattern that contains any of the special characters
     `*', `?' or `['.

     The glob() argument stores the number of matched pathnames into the
     gl_pathc field, and a pointer to a list of pointers to pathnames into the
     gl_pathv field.  The first pointer after the last pathname is NULL.  If
     the pattern does not match any pathnames, the returned number of matched
     paths is set to zero.

     It is the caller's responsibility to create the structure pointed to by
     pglob.  The glob() function allocates other space as needed, including
     the memory pointed to by gl_pathv.

     The argument flags is used to modify the behavior of glob().  The value
     of flags is the bitwise inclusive OR of any of the following values
     defined in <glob.h>:

     GLOB_APPEND      Append pathnames generated to the ones from a previous
		      call (or calls) to glob().  The value of gl_pathc will
		      be the total matches found by this call and the previous
		      call(s).	The pathnames are appended to, not merged with
		      the pathnames returned by the previous call(s).  Between
		      calls, the caller must not change the setting of the
		      GLOB_DOOFFS flag, nor change the value of gl_offs when
		      GLOB_DOOFFS is set, nor (obviously) call globfree() for
		      pglob.

     GLOB_DOOFFS      Make use of the gl_offs field.  If this flag is set,
		      gl_offs is used to specify how many NULL pointers to
		      prepend to the beginning of the gl_pathv field.  In
		      other words, gl_pathv will point to gl_offs NULL pointers,
 followed by gl_pathc pathname pointers, followed by
		      a NULL pointer.

     GLOB_ERR	      Causes glob() to return when it encounters a directory
		      that it cannot open or read.  Ordinarily, glob() continues
 to find matches.

     GLOB_MARK	      Each pathname that is a directory that matches pattern
		      has a slash appended.

     GLOB_NOCHECK     If pattern does not match any pathname, then glob()
		      returns a list consisting of only pattern, with the number
 of total pathnames set to 1, and the number of
		      matched pathnames set to 0.  The effect of backslash
		      escaping is present in the pattern returned.

     GLOB_NOESCAPE    By default, a backslash (`\') character is used to
		      escape the following character in the pattern, avoiding
		      any special interpretation of the character.  If
		      GLOB_NOESCAPE is set, backslash escaping is disabled.

     GLOB_NOSORT      By default, the pathnames are sorted in ascending ASCII
		      order; this flag prevents that sorting (speeding up
		      glob()).

     The following values may also be included in flags, however, they are
     non-standard extensions to IEEE Std 1003.2 (``POSIX.2'').

     GLOB_ALTDIRFUNC  The following additional fields in the pglob structure
		      have been initialized with alternate functions for glob
		      to use to open, read, and close directories and to get
		      stat information on names found in those directories.

		      void *(*gl_opendir)(const char * name);
		      struct dirent *(*gl_readdir)(void *);
		      void (*gl_closedir)(void *);
		      int (*gl_lstat)(const char *name, struct stat *st);
		      int (*gl_stat)(const char *name, struct stat *st);

		      This extension is provided to allow programs such as
		      restore(8) to provide globbing from directories stored
		      on tape.

     GLOB_BRACE       Pre-process the pattern string to expand `{pat,pat,...}'
		      strings like csh(1).  The pattern `{}' is left unexpanded
 for historical reasons (and csh(1) does the same
		      thing to ease typing of find(1) patterns).

     GLOB_MAGCHAR     Set by the glob() function if the pattern included globbing
 characters.	See the description of the usage of
		      the gl_matchc structure member for more details.

     GLOB_NOMAGIC     Is the same as GLOB_NOCHECK but it only appends the
		      pattern if it does not contain any of the special characters
 ``*'', ``?'' or ``[''.  GLOB_NOMAGIC is provided
		      to simplify implementing the historic csh(1) globbing
		      behavior and should probably not be used anywhere else.

     GLOB_TILDE       Expand patterns that start with `~' to user name home
		      directories.

     GLOB_LIMIT       Limit the total number of returned pathnames to the
		      value provided in gl_matchc (default ARG_MAX).  This
		      option should be set for programs that can be coerced
		      into a denial of service attack via patterns that expand
		      to a very large number of matches, such as a long string
		      of `*/../*/..'.

     If, during the search, a directory is encountered that cannot be opened
     or read and errfunc is non-NULL, glob() calls (*errfunc)(path, errno).
     This may be unintuitive: a pattern like `*/Makefile' will try to stat(2)
     `foo/Makefile' even if `foo' is not a directory, resulting in a call to
     errfunc.  The error routine can suppress this action by testing for
     ENOENT and ENOTDIR; however, the GLOB_ERR flag will still cause an immediate
 return when this happens.

     If errfunc returns non-zero, glob() stops the scan and returns
     GLOB_ABORTED after setting gl_pathc and gl_pathv to reflect any paths
     already matched.  This also happens if an error is encountered and
     GLOB_ERR is set in flags, regardless of the return value of errfunc, if
     called.  If GLOB_ERR is not set and either errfunc is NULL or errfunc
     returns zero, the error is ignored.

     The globfree() function frees any space associated with pglob from a previous
 call(s) to glob().

RETURN VALUES    [Toc]    [Back]

     On successful completion, glob() returns zero.  In addition the fields of
     pglob contain the values described below:

     gl_pathc	   contains the total number of matched pathnames so far.
		   This includes other matches from previous invocations of
		   glob() if GLOB_APPEND was specified.

     gl_matchc	   contains the number of matched pathnames in the current
		   invocation of glob().

     gl_flags	   contains a copy of the flags argument with the bit
		   GLOB_MAGCHAR set if pattern contained any of the special
		   characters ``*'', ``?'' or ``['', cleared if not.

     gl_pathv	   contains a pointer to a NULL-terminated list of matched
		   pathnames.  However, if gl_pathc is zero, the contents of
		   gl_pathv are undefined.

     If glob() terminates due to an error, it sets errno and returns one of
     the following non-zero constants, which are defined in the include file
     <glob.h>:

     GLOB_NOSPACE  An attempt to allocate memory failed, or if errno was 0
		   GLOB_LIMIT was specified in the flags and pglob->gl_matchc
		   or more patterns were matched.

     GLOB_ABORTED  The scan was stopped because an error was encountered and
		   either GLOB_ERR was set or (*errfunc)() returned non-zero.

     GLOB_NOMATCH  The pattern did not match a pathname and GLOB_NOCHECK was
		   not set.

     The arguments pglob->gl_pathc and pglob->gl_pathv are still set as specified
 above.

EXAMPLES    [Toc]    [Back]

     A rough equivalent of `ls -l *.c *.h' can be obtained with the following
     code:

	   glob_t g;

	   g.gl_offs = 2;
	   glob("*.c", GLOB_DOOFFS, NULL, &g);
	   glob("*.h", GLOB_DOOFFS | GLOB_APPEND, NULL, &g);
	   g.gl_pathv[0] = "ls";
	   g.gl_pathv[1] = "-l";
	   execvp("ls", g.gl_pathv);

SEE ALSO    [Toc]    [Back]

      
      
     sh(1), fnmatch(3), regexp(3)

STANDARDS    [Toc]    [Back]

     The glob() function is expected to be IEEE Std 1003.2 (``POSIX.2'') compatible
 with the exception that the flags GLOB_ALTDIRFUNC, GLOB_BRACE,
     GLOB_LIMIT, GLOB_MAGCHAR, GLOB_NOMAGIC, and GLOB_TILDE, and the fields
     gl_matchc and gl_flags should not be used by applications striving for
     strict POSIX conformance.

HISTORY    [Toc]    [Back]

     The glob() and globfree() functions first appeared in 4.4BSD.

BUGS    [Toc]    [Back]

     Patterns longer than MAXPATHLEN may cause unchecked errors.

     The glob() argument may fail and set errno for any of the errors specified
 for the library routines stat(2), closedir(3), opendir(3),
     readdir(3), malloc(3), and free(3).


FreeBSD 5.2.1			April 16, 1994			 FreeBSD 5.2.1
[ Back ]
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