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

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