.\" $OpenBSD: glob.3,v 1.30 2012/01/20 07:09:42 tedu Exp $ .\" .\" Copyright (c) 1989, 1991, 1993, 1994 .\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. .\" .\" This code is derived from software contributed to Berkeley by .\" Guido van Rossum. .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions .\" are met: .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. .\" 3. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors .\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software .\" without specific prior written permission. .\" .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND .\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE .\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE .\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE .\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL .\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS .\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) .\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT .\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY .\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF .\" SUCH DAMAGE. .\" .Dd $Mdocdate: January 20 2012 $ .Dt GLOB 3 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm glob , .Nm globfree .Nd generate pathnames matching a pattern .Sh SYNOPSIS .Fd #include .Ft int .Fn glob "const char *pattern" "int flags" "const int (*errfunc)(const char *, int)" "glob_t *pglob" .Ft void .Fn globfree "glob_t *pglob" .Sh DESCRIPTION The .Fn glob function is a pathname generator that implements the rules for file name pattern matching used by the shell. .Pp The include file .Aq Pa glob.h defines the structure type .Li glob_t , which contains at least the following fields: .Bd -literal -offset indent 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; .Ed .Pp The argument .Fa pattern is a pointer to a pathname pattern to be expanded. .Fn glob matches all accessible pathnames against the pattern and creates a list of the pathnames that match. In order to have access to a pathname, .Fn glob requires search permission on every component of a path except the last and read permission on each directory of any filename component of .Fa pattern that contains any of the special characters .Ql * , .Ql \&? , or .Ql \&[ . .Pp The number of matched pathnames is stored in the .Fa gl_pathc field, and a pointer to a list of pointers to pathnames in the .Fa gl_pathv field. The first pointer after the last pathname is .Dv NULL . If the pattern does not match any pathnames, the returned number of matched paths is set to zero. .Pp It is the caller's responsibility to create the structure pointed to by .Fa pglob . The .Fn glob function allocates other space as needed, including the memory pointed to by .Fa gl_pathv . .Pp The argument .Fa flags is used to modify the behavior of .Fn glob . The value of .Fa flags is the bitwise inclusive .Tn OR of any of the following values defined in .Aq Pa glob.h : .Bl -tag -width GLOB_ALTDIRFUNC .It Dv GLOB_APPEND Append pathnames generated to the ones from a previous call (or calls) to .Fn glob . The value of .Fa 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 .Dv GLOB_DOOFFS flag, nor change the value of .Fa gl_offs when .Dv GLOB_DOOFFS is set, nor (obviously) call .Fn globfree for .Fa pglob . .It Dv GLOB_DOOFFS Make use of the .Fa gl_offs field. If this flag is set, .Fa gl_offs is used to specify how many null pointers to prepend to the beginning of the .Fa gl_pathv field. In other words, .Fa gl_pathv will point to .Fa gl_offs null pointers, followed by .Fa gl_pathc pathname pointers, followed by a null pointer. .It Dv GLOB_ERR Causes .Fn glob to return when it encounters a directory that it cannot open or read. Ordinarily, .Fn glob continues to find matches. .It Dv GLOB_MARK Each pathname that is a directory that matches .Fa pattern has a slash appended. .It Dv GLOB_NOCHECK If .Fa pattern does not match any pathname, then .Fn glob returns a list consisting of only .Fa pattern , with the number of total pathnames set to 1, and the number of matched pathnames set to 0. .It Dv GLOB_NOESCAPE Normally, every occurrence of a backslash .Pq Ql \e followed by a character in .Fa pattern is replaced by that character. This is done to negate any special meaning for the character. If the .Dv GLOB_NOESCAPE flag is set, a backslash character is treated as an ordinary character. .It Dv GLOB_NOSORT By default, the pathnames are sorted in ascending .Tn ASCII order; this flag prevents that sorting (speeding up .Fn glob ) . .El .Pp The following values may also be included in .Fa flags , however, they are non-standard extensions to .St -p1003.2 . .Bl -tag -width GLOB_ALTDIRFUNC .It Dv GLOB_ALTDIRFUNC The following additional fields in the .Fa pglob structure have been initialized with alternate functions for .Fn glob to use to open, read, and close directories and to get stat information on names found in those directories: .Bd -literal void *(*gl_opendir)(const char *); struct dirent *(*gl_readdir)(void *); void (*gl_closedir)(void *); int (*gl_lstat)(const char *, struct stat *); int (*gl_stat)(const char *, struct stat *); .Ed .Pp This extension is provided to allow programs such as .Xr restore 8 to provide globbing from directories stored on tape. .It Dv GLOB_BRACE Pre-process the pattern string to expand .Ql {pat,pat,...} strings like .Xr csh 1 . The pattern .Ql {} is left unexpanded for historical reasons. .Xr (csh 1 does the same thing to ease typing of .Xr find 1 patterns.) .It Dv GLOB_KEEPSTAT Retain a copy of the .Xr stat 2 information retrieved for matching paths in the .Fa gl_statv array: .Bd -literal -offset indent struct stat **gl_statv; .Ed .Pp This option may be used to avoid .Xr lstat 2 lookups in cases where they are expensive. .It Dv GLOB_MAGCHAR Set by the .Fn glob function if the pattern included globbing characters. See the description of the usage of the .Fa gl_matchc structure member for more details. .It Dv GLOB_NOMAGIC Is the same as .Dv GLOB_NOCHECK but it only appends the .Fa pattern if it does not contain any of the special characters .Ql * , .Ql \&? , or .Ql \&[ . .Dv GLOB_NOMAGIC is provided to simplify implementing the historic .Xr csh 1 globbing behavior and should probably not be used anywhere else. .It Dv GLOB_QUOTE This option has no effect and is included for backwards compatibility with older sources. .It Dv GLOB_TILDE Expand patterns that start with .Ql ~ to user name home directories. .It Dv GLOB_LIMIT Limit the amount of memory used to store matched strings to .Li 64K , the number of .Xr stat 2 calls to 2048, and the number of .Xr readdir 3 calls to 16K. This option should be set for programs that can be coerced to a denial of service attack via patterns that expand to a very large number of matches, such as a long string of .Ql */../*/.. . .El .Pp If, during the search, a directory is encountered that cannot be opened or read and .Fa errfunc is non-null, .Fn glob calls .Fa (*errfunc)(path, errno) . This may be unintuitive: a pattern like .Dq */Makefile will try to .Xr stat 2 .Dq foo/Makefile even if .Dq foo is not a directory, resulting in a call to .Fa errfunc . The error routine can suppress this action by testing for .Er ENOENT and .Er ENOTDIR ; however, the .Dv GLOB_ERR flag will still cause an immediate return when this happens. .Pp If .Fa errfunc returns non-zero, .Fn glob stops the scan and returns .Dv GLOB_ABORTED after setting .Fa gl_pathc and .Fa gl_pathv to reflect any paths already matched. This also happens if an error is encountered and .Dv GLOB_ERR is set in .Fa flags , regardless of the return value of .Fa errfunc , if called. If .Dv GLOB_ERR is not set and either .Fa errfunc is .Dv NULL or .Fa errfunc returns zero, the error is ignored. .Pp The .Fn globfree function frees any space associated with .Fa pglob from a previous call(s) to .Fn glob . .Sh RETURN VALUES On successful completion, .Fn glob returns zero. In addition the fields of .Fa pglob contain the values described below: .Bl -tag -width GLOB_NOCHECK .It Fa gl_pathc Contains the total number of matched pathnames so far. This includes other matches from previous invocations of .Fn glob if .Dv GLOB_APPEND was specified. .It Fa gl_matchc Contains the number of matched pathnames in the current invocation of .Fn glob . .It Fa gl_flags Contains a copy of the .Fa flags parameter with the bit .Dv GLOB_MAGCHAR set if .Fa pattern contained any of the special characters .Ql * , .Ql \&? , or .Ql \&[ , cleared if not. .It Fa gl_pathv Contains a pointer to a null-terminated list of matched pathnames. However, if .Fa gl_pathc is zero, the contents of .Fa gl_pathv are undefined. .It Fa gl_statv If the .Dv GLOB_KEEPSTAT flag was set, .Fa gl_statv contains a pointer to a null-terminated list of matched .Xr stat 2 objects corresponding to the paths in .Fa gl_pathc . .El .Pp If .Fn glob terminates due to an error, it sets .Va errno and returns one of the following non-zero constants, which are defined in the include file .Aq Pa glob.h : .Bl -tag -width GLOB_NOCHECK .It Dv GLOB_NOSPACE An attempt to allocate memory failed, or if .Va errno was 0 .Li GLOB_LIMIT was specified in the flags and .Li ARG_MAX or more patterns were matched. .It Dv GLOB_ABORTED The scan was stopped because an error was encountered and either .Dv GLOB_ERR was set, or .Fa (*errfunc)() returned non-zero. .It Dv GLOB_NOMATCH The pattern did not match a pathname and .Dv GLOB_NOCHECK was not set. .It Dv GLOB_NOSYS The requested function is not supported by this version of .Fn glob . .El .Pp The arguments .Fa pglob\->gl_pathc and .Fa pglob\->gl_pathv are still set as specified above. .Sh EXAMPLES A rough equivalent of .Ql "ls -l *.c *.h" can be obtained with the following code: .Bd -literal -offset indent 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); .Ed .Sh ERRORS The .Fn glob function may fail and set .Va errno for any of the errors specified for the library routines .Xr stat 2 , .Xr closedir 3 , .Xr opendir 3 , .Xr readdir 3 , .Xr malloc 3 , and .Xr free 3 . .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr sh 1 , .Xr fnmatch 3 , .Xr regex 3 , .Xr glob 7 .Sh STANDARDS The .Fn glob function is expected to conform to .St -p1003.2 and .St -xpg4.2 . Note, however, that the flags .Dv GLOB_ALTDIRFUNC , .Dv GLOB_BRACE , .Dv GLOB_KEEPSTAT , .Dv GLOB_MAGCHAR , .Dv GLOB_NOMAGIC , .Dv GLOB_QUOTE , .Dv GLOB_TILDE , and .Dv GLOB_LIMIT and the fields .Fa gl_matchc , .Fa gl_statv and .Fa gl_flags should not be used by applications striving for strict standards conformance. .Sh HISTORY The .Fn glob and .Fn globfree functions first appeared in .Bx 4.4 . .Sh BUGS Patterns longer than .Dv MAXPATHLEN may cause unchecked errors.