globfree(3)                                                 globfree(3)

  glob()

  NAME

    glob(), globfree() - generate pathnames matching a pattern

  SYNOPSIS

    #include 

    int glob (const char *pattern, int flags,
             const int (*errfunc)(const char *, int), glob_t *pglob)
    void globfree (glob_t *pglob)

  DESCRIPTION

    The glob(3) function is a pathname generator that implements the rules for
    file name pattern matching used by the standard shell.

    The include file  defines the structure type glob_t, which
    contains at least the following fields:

    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;

    The argument pattern is a pointer to a pathname pattern to be expanded.
    The glob(3) argument matches all accessible pathnames against the pattern
    and creates a list of the pathnames that match. In order to have access to
    a pathname, glob(3) requires search permission on every component of a
    path except the last and read permission on each directory of any filename
    component of pattern that contains any of the special characters *, ? or
    [.

    The glob(3) argument stores the number of matched pathnames into the
    gl_pathc field, and a pointer to a list of pointers to pathnames into the
    gl_pathv field. The first pointer after the last pathname is NULL. If the
    pattern does not match any pathnames, the returned number of matched paths
    is set to zero.

    It is the caller's responsibility to create the structure pointed to by
    pglob. The glob(3) function allocates other space as needed, including the
    memory pointed to by gl_pathv.

    The argument flags is used to modify the behavior of glob(3). The value of
    flags is the bitwise inclusive OR of any of the following values defined
    in :

    GLOB_APPEND
        Append pathnames generated to the ones from a previous call (or calls)
        to glob(3). The value of 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 GLOB_DOOFFS flag,
        nor change the value of gl_offs when GLOB_DOOFFS is set, nor
        (obviously) call globfree(3) for pglob.

    GLOB_DOOFFS
        Make use of the gl_offs field. If this flag is set, gl_offs is used to
        specify how many NULL pointers to prepend to the beginning of the
        gl_pathv field. In other words, gl_pathv will point to gl_offs NULL
        pointers, followed by gl_pathc pathname pointers, followed by a NULL
        pointer.

    GLOB_ERR
        Causes glob(3) to return when it encounters a directory that it cannot
        open or read. Ordinarily, glob(3) continues to find matches.

    GLOB_MARK
        Each pathname that is a directory that matches pattern has a slash
        appended.

    GLOB_NOCHECK
        If pattern does not match any pathname, then glob(3) returns a list
        consisting of only pattern, with the number of total pathnames is set
        to 1, and the number of matched pathnames set to 0. If GLOB_QUOTE is
        set, its effect is present in the pattern returned.

    GLOB_NOSORT
        By default, the pathnames are sorted in ascending ASCII order; this
        flag prevents that sorting (speeding up glob(3)).

    The following values may also be included in flags, however, they are non-
    standard extensions to

    GLOB_ALTDIRFUNC
        The following additional fields in the pglob structure have been
        initialized with alternate functions for glob(3) to use to open, read,
        and close directories and to get stat information on names found in
        those directories.
        void *(*gl_opendir)(const char * name);
        struct dirent *(*gl_readdir)(void *);
        void (*gl_closedir)(void *);
        int (*gl_lstat)(const char *name, struct stat *st);
        int (*gl_stat)(const char *name, struct stat *st);
        This extension is provided to allow programs such as restore() to
        provide globbing from directories stored on tape.

    GLOB_BRACE
        Pre-process the pattern string to expand {pat,pat,...} strings like
        Csh(1)The {} is left unexpanded for historical reasons (Csh(1) does
        the same thing to ease typing of find() patterns).

    GLOB_MAGCHAR
        Set by the glob(3) function if the pattern included globbing
        characters. See the description of the usage of the gl_matchc
        structure member for more details.

    GLOB_NOMAGIC
        Is the same as GLOB_NOCHECK but it only appends the pattern if it does
        not contain any of the special characters "*", "?" or "[".
        GLOB_NOMAGIC is provided to simplify implementing the historic csh(1)
        globbing behavior and should probably not be used anywhere else.

    GLOB_QUOTE
        Use the backslash (\ character for quoting: every occurrence of a
        backslash followed by a character in the pattern is replaced by that
        character, avoiding any special interpretation of the character.

    GLOB_TILDE
        Expand patterns that start with ~ to user name home directories.

    If, during the search, a directory is encountered that cannot be opened or
    read and errfunc is non-NULL, glob(3) calls (*errfunc This may be
    unintuitive: a pattern like */Makefile will try to stat(2) foo/Makefile
    even if foo is not a directory, resulting in a call to errfunc. The error
    routine can suppress this action by testing for ENOENT and ENOTDIR;
    however, the GLOB_ERR flag will still cause an immediate return when this
    happens.

    If errfunc returns non-zero, glob(3) stops the scan and returns GLOB_ABEND
    after setting gl_pathc and gl_pathv to reflect any paths already matched.
    This also happens if an error is encountered and GLOB_ERR is set in flags,
    regardless of the return value of errfunc, if called. If GLOB_ERR is not
    set and either errfunc is NULL or errfunc returns zero, the error is
    ignored.

    The globfree(3) function frees any space associated with pglob from a
    previous call(s) to glob(3).

  RETURN VALUES

    On successful completion, glob(3) returns zero. In addition the fields of
    pglob contain the values described below:

    gl_pathc
        contains the total number of matched pathnames so far. This includes
        other matches from previous invocations of glob(3) if GLOB_APPEND was
        specified.

    gl_matchc
        contains the number of matched pathnames in the current invocation of
        glob(3).

    gl_flags
        contains a copy of the flags parameter with the bit GLOB_MAGCHAR set
        if pattern contained any of the special characters "*", "?" or "[",
        cleared if not.

    gl_pathv
        contains a pointer to a NULL-terminated list of matched pathnames.
        However, if gl_pathc is zero, the contents of gl_pathv are undefined.

    If glob(3) terminates due to an error, it sets errno and returns one of
    the following non-zero constants, which are defined in the include file
    :

    GLOB_NOSPACE
        An attempt to allocate memory failed.

    GLOB_ABEND
        The scan was stopped because an error was encountered and either
        GLOB_ERR was set or (*errfunc returned non-zero.

    The arguments pglob->gl_pathc and pglob->gl_pathv are still set as
    specified above.

  EXAMPLE

    A rough equivalent of ls -l *.c *.h can be obtained with the following
    code:

    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);

  NOTE

    The file name matching implemented by glob(3) is the basic set of matches
    specified by the Open Group's specification. It treats the characters *,
    ?, and [ as special. It does not support all of the special matches that
    are part of the KornShell (such as *(), for example).

  SEE ALSO

    sh(1)

    fnmatch(3)

    regexec(3)

  BUGS

    Patterns longer than {MAXPATHLEN} may cause unchecked errors.

    The glob(3) argument may fail and set errno for any of the errors
    specified for the library routines stat(2), closedir(3), opendir(3),
    readdir(2), malloc(3), and free(3).

  USAGE NOTES

    All of these functions are thread safe.

    None of these functions are async-signal safe.