WILDMAT(3)WILDMAT(3)NAMEwildmat - perform shell-style wildcard matching
SYNOPSIS
int
wildmat(text, pattern)
char *text;
char *pattern;
DESCRIPTION
Wildmat is part of libinn (3). Wildmat compares the text
against the pattern and returns non-zero if the pattern
matches the text. The pattern is interpreted according to
rules similar to shell filename wildcards, and not as a
full regular expression such as those handled by the
grep(1) family of programs or the regex(3) or regexp(3)
set of routines.
The pattern is interpreted as follows:
\x Turns off the special meaning of x and matches it
directly; this is used mostly before a question
mark or asterisk, and is not special inside square
brackets.
? Matches any single character.
* Matches any sequence of zero or more characters.
[x...y]
Matches any single character specified by the set
x...y. A minus sign may be used to indicate a
range of characters. That is, [0-5abc] is a short-
hand for [012345abc]. More than one range may
appear inside a character set; [0-9a-zA-Z._]
matches almost all of the legal characters for a
host name. The close bracket, ], may be used if it
is the first character in the set. The minus sign,
-, may be used if it is either the first or last
character in the set.
[^x...y]
This matches any character not in the set x...y,
which is interpreted as described above. For exam-
ple, [^]-] matches any character other than a close
bracket or minus sign.
HISTORY
Written by Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> in 1986, and
posted to Usenet several times since then, most notably in
comp.sources.misc in March, 1991.
Lars Mathiesen <thorinn@diku.dk> enhanced the multi-aster-
isk failure mode in early 1991.
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WILDMAT(3)WILDMAT(3)
Rich and Lars increased the efficiency of star patterns
and reposted it to comp.sources.misc in April, 1991.
Robert Elz <kre@munnari.oz.au> added minus sign and close
bracket handling in June, 1991.
This is revision 1.1.2.1, dated 1999/06/12.
SEE ALSOgrep(1), regex(3), regexp(3).
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