1glob(n) Tcl Built-In Commands glob(n)
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8 glob - Return names of files that match patterns
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11 glob ?switches? pattern ?pattern ...?
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16 This command performs file name “globbing” in a fashion similar to the
17 csh shell. It returns a list of the files whose names match any of the
18 pattern arguments. No particular order is guaranteed in the list, so
19 if a sorted list is required the caller should use lsort.
20 If the initial arguments to glob start with - then they are treated as
22 switches. The following switches are currently supported:
23 -directory directory
25 Search for files which match the given patterns starting in the
26 given directory. This allows searching of directories whose
27 name contains glob-sensitive characters without the need to
28 quote such characters explicitly. This option may not be used
29 in conjunction with -path, which is used to allow searching for
30 complete file paths whose names may contain glob-sensitive char‐
31 acters.
32 -join The remaining pattern arguments are treated as a single pattern
34 obtained by joining the arguments with directory separators.
35 -nocomplain
37 Allows an empty list to be returned without error; without this
38 switch an error is returned if the result list would be empty.
39 -path pathPrefix
41 Search for files with the given pathPrefix where the rest of the
42 name matches the given patterns. This allows searching for
43 files with names similar to a given file (as opposed to a direc‐
44 tory) even when the names contain glob-sensitive characters.
45 This option may not be used in conjunction with -directory. For
46 example, to find all files with the same root name as $path, but
47 differing extensions, you should use glob -path [file rootname
48 $path] .* which will work even if $path contains numerous glob-
49 sensitive characters.
50 -tails Only return the part of each file found which follows the last
52 directory named in any -directory or -path path specification.
53 Thus glob -tails -directory $dir * is equivalent to set pwd
54 [pwd] ; cd $dir ; glob *; cd $pwd. For -path specifications,
55 the returned names will include the last path segment, so glob
56 -tails -path [file rootname ~/foo.tex] .* will return paths
57 like foo.aux foo.bib foo.tex etc.
58 -types typeList
60 Only list files or directories which match typeList, where the
61 items in the list have two forms. The first form is like the
62 -type option of the Unix find command: b (block special file), c
63 (character special file), d (directory), f (plain file), l (sym‐
64 bolic link), p (named pipe), or s (socket), where multiple types
65 may be specified in the list. Glob will return all files which
66 match at least one of the types given. Note that symbolic links
67 will be returned both if -types l is given, or if the target of
68 a link matches the requested type. So, a link to a directory
69 will be returned if -types d was specified.
70 The second form specifies types where all the types given must
72 match. These are r, w, x as file permissions, and readonly,
73 hidden as special permission cases. On the Macintosh, MacOS
74 types and creators are also supported, where any item which is
75 four characters long is assumed to be a MacOS type (e.g. TEXT).
76 Items which are of the form {macintosh type XXXX} or {macintosh
77 creator XXXX} will match types or creators respectively. Unrec‐
78 ognized types, or specifications of multiple MacOS types/cre‐
79 ators will signal an error.
80 The two forms may be mixed, so -types {d f r w} will find all
82 regular files OR directories that have both read AND write per‐
83 missions. The following are equivalent:
84 glob -type d *
85 glob */
86 except that the first case doesn't return the trailing “/” and
87 is more platform independent.
88 -- Marks the end of switches. The argument following this one will
90 be treated as a pattern even if it starts with a -.
91 The pattern arguments may contain any of the following special charac‐
93 ters:
94 ? Matches any single character.
96 * Matches any sequence of zero or more characters.
98 [chars] Matches any single character in chars. If chars contains a
100 sequence of the form a-b then any character between a and b
101 (inclusive) will match.
102 \x Matches the character x.
104 {a,b,...} Matches any of the strings a, b, etc.
106 On Unix, as with csh, a “.” at the beginning of a file's name or just
108 after a “/” must be matched explicitly or with a {} construct, unless
109 the -types hidden flag is given (since “.” at the beginning of a
110 file's name indicates that it is hidden). On other platforms, files
111 beginning with a “.” are handled no differently to any others, except
112 the special directories “.” and “..” which must be matched explicitly
113 (this is to avoid a recursive pattern like “glob -join * * * *” from
114 recursing up the directory hierarchy as well as down). In addition, all
115 “/” characters must be matched explicitly.
116 If the first character in a pattern is “~” then it refers to the home
118 directory for the user whose name follows the “~”. If the “~” is fol‐
119 lowed immediately by “/” then the value of the HOME environment vari‐
120 able is used.
121 The glob command differs from csh globbing in two ways. First, it does
123 not sort its result list (use the lsort command if you want the list
124 sorted). Second, glob only returns the names of files that actually
125 exist; in csh no check for existence is made unless a pattern contains
126 a ?, *, or [] construct.
127 When the glob command returns relative paths whose filenames start with
129 a tilde “~” (for example through glob * or glob -tails, the returned
130 list will not quote the tilde with “./”. This means care must be taken
131 if those names are later to be used with file join, to avoid them being
132 interpreted as absolute paths pointing to a given user's home direc‐
133 tory.
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136 Windows For Windows UNC names, the servername and sharename components
137 of the path may not contain ?, *, or [] constructs. On Windows NT, if
138 pattern is of the form “~username@domain”, it refers to the home direc‐
139 tory of the user whose account information resides on the specified NT
140 domain server. Otherwise, user account information is obtained from
141 the local computer. On Windows 95 and 98, glob accepts patterns like
142 “.../” and “..../” for successively higher up parent directories.
143 Since the backslash character has a special meaning to the glob com‐
145 mand, glob patterns containing Windows style path separators need spe‐
146 cial care. The pattern C:\\foo\\* is interpreted as C:\foo\* where \f
147 will match the single character f and \* will match the single charac‐
148 ter * and will not be interpreted as a wildcard character. One solution
149 to this problem is to use the Unix style forward slash as a path sepa‐
150 rator. Windows style paths can be converted to Unix style paths with
151 the command file join $path (or file normalize $path in Tcl 8.4).
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154 Find all the Tcl files in the current directory:
155 glob *.tcl
156 Find all the Tcl files in the user's home directory, irrespective of
158 what the current directory is:
159 glob -directory ~ *.tcl
160 Find all subdirectories of the current directory:
162 glob -type d *
163 Find all files whose name contains an “a”, a “b” or the sequence “cde”:
165 glob -type f *{a,b,cde}*
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169 file(n)
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173 exist, file, glob, pattern
174Tcl 8.3 glob(n)