1glob(n) Tcl Built-In Commands glob(n)
2______________________________________________________________________________
6
8 glob - Return names of files that match patterns
9
11 glob ?switches? pattern ?pattern ...?
12_________________________________________________________________
13
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, after option processing, are
34 treated as a single pattern obtained by joining the arguments
35 with directory separators.
36 -nocomplain
38 Allows an empty list to be returned without error; without this
39 switch an error is returned if the result list would be empty.
40 -path pathPrefix
42 Search for files with the given pathPrefix where the rest of the
43 name matches the given patterns. This allows searching for
44 files with names similar to a given file (as opposed to a direc‐
45 tory) even when the names contain glob-sensitive characters.
46 This option may not be used in conjunction with -directory. For
47 example, to find all files with the same root name as $path, but
48 differing extensions, you should use glob -path [file rootname
49 $path] .* which will work even if $path contains numerous glob-
50 sensitive characters.
51 -tails Only return the part of each file found which follows the last
53 directory named in any -directory or -path path specification.
54 Thus glob -tails -directory $dir * is equivalent to set pwd
55 [pwd] ; cd $dir ; glob *; cd $pwd. For -path specifications,
56 the returned names will include the last path segment, so glob
57 -tails -path [file rootname ~/foo.tex] .* will return paths
58 like foo.aux foo.bib foo.tex etc.
59 -types typeList
61 Only list files or directories which match typeList, where the
62 items in the list have two forms. The first form is like the
63 -type option of the Unix find command: b (block special file), c
64 (character special file), d (directory), f (plain file), l (sym‐
65 bolic link), p (named pipe), or s (socket), where multiple types
66 may be specified in the list. Glob will return all files which
67 match at least one of the types given. Note that symbolic links
68 will be returned both if -types l is given, or if the target of
69 a link matches the requested type. So, a link to a directory
70 will be returned if -types d was specified.
71 The second form specifies types where all the types given must
73 match. These are r, w, x as file permissions, and readonly,
74 hidden as special permission cases. On the Macintosh, MacOS
75 types and creators are also supported, where any item which is
76 four characters long is assumed to be a MacOS type (e.g. TEXT).
77 Items which are of the form {macintosh type XXXX} or {macintosh
78 creator XXXX} will match types or creators respectively. Unrec‐
79 ognized types, or specifications of multiple MacOS types/cre‐
80 ators will signal an error.
81 The two forms may be mixed, so -types {d f r w} will find all
83 regular files OR directories that have both read AND write per‐
84 missions. The following are equivalent:
85 glob -type d *
86 glob */
87 except that the first case doesn't return the trailing “/” and
88 is more platform independent.
89 -- Marks the end of switches. The argument following this one will
91 be treated as a pattern even if it starts with a -.
92 The pattern arguments may contain any of the following special charac‐
94 ters:
95 ? Matches any single character.
97 * Matches any sequence of zero or more characters.
99 [chars] Matches any single character in chars. If chars contains a
101 sequence of the form a-b then any character between a and b
102 (inclusive) will match.
103 \x Matches the character x.
105 {a,b,...} Matches any of the strings a, b, etc.
107 On Unix, as with csh, a “.” at the beginning of a file's name or just
109 after a “/” must be matched explicitly or with a {} construct, unless
110 the -types hidden flag is given (since “.” at the beginning of a
111 file's name indicates that it is hidden). On other platforms, files
112 beginning with a “.” are handled no differently to any others, except
113 the special directories “.” and “..” which must be matched explicitly
114 (this is to avoid a recursive pattern like “glob -join * * * *” from
115 recursing up the directory hierarchy as well as down). In addition, all
116 “/” characters must be matched explicitly.
117 If the first character in a pattern is “~” then it refers to the home
119 directory for the user whose name follows the “~”. If the “~” is fol‐
120 lowed immediately by “/” then the value of the HOME environment vari‐
121 able is used.
122 The glob command differs from csh globbing in two ways. First, it does
124 not sort its result list (use the lsort command if you want the list
125 sorted). Second, glob only returns the names of files that actually
126 exist; in csh no check for existence is made unless a pattern contains
127 a ?, *, or [] construct.
128 When the glob command returns relative paths whose filenames start with
130 a tilde “~” (for example through glob * or glob -tails, the returned
131 list will not quote the tilde with “./”. This means care must be taken
132 if those names are later to be used with file join, to avoid them being
133 interpreted as absolute paths pointing to a given user's home direc‐
134 tory.
135
137 Windows For Windows UNC names, the servername and sharename components
138 of the path may not contain ?, *, or [] constructs. On Windows NT, if
139 pattern is of the form “~username@domain”, it refers to the home direc‐
140 tory of the user whose account information resides on the specified NT
141 domain server. Otherwise, user account information is obtained from
142 the local computer. On Windows 95 and 98, glob accepts patterns like
143 “.../” and “..../” for successively higher up parent directories.
144 Since the backslash character has a special meaning to the glob com‐
146 mand, glob patterns containing Windows style path separators need spe‐
147 cial care. The pattern C:\\foo\\* is interpreted as C:\foo\* where \f
148 will match the single character f and \* will match the single charac‐
149 ter * and will not be interpreted as a wildcard character. One solution
150 to this problem is to use the Unix style forward slash as a path sepa‐
151 rator. Windows style paths can be converted to Unix style paths with
152 the command file join $path (or file normalize $path in Tcl 8.4).
153
155 Find all the Tcl files in the current directory:
156 glob *.tcl
157 Find all the Tcl files in the user's home directory, irrespective of
159 what the current directory is:
160 glob -directory ~ *.tcl
161 Find all subdirectories of the current directory:
163 glob -type d *
164 Find all files whose name contains an “a”, a “b” or the sequence “cde”:
166 glob -type f *{a,b,cde}*
167
170 file(n)
171
174 exist, file, glob, pattern
175Tcl 8.3 glob(n)