GLOB(3)                                             Linux Programmer's Manual                                            GLOB(3)



NAME
       glob, globfree - find pathnames matching a pattern, free memory from glob()

SYNOPSIS
       #include <glob.h>

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

DESCRIPTION
       The  glob()  function  searches  for  all  the  pathnames  matching pattern according to the rules used by the shell (see
       glob(7)).  No tilde expansion or parameter substitution is done; if you want these, use wordexp(3).

       The globfree() function frees the dynamically allocated storage from an earlier call to glob().

       The results of a glob() call are stored in the structure pointed to by pglob.  This structure is of type glob_t (declared
       in <glob.h>) and includes the following elements defined by POSIX.2 (more may be present as an extension):

           typedef struct {
               size_t   gl_pathc;    /* Count of paths matched so far  */
               char   **gl_pathv;    /* List of matched pathnames.  */
               size_t   gl_offs;     /* Slots to reserve in gl_pathv.  */
           } glob_t;

       Results are stored in dynamically allocated storage.

       The argument flags is made up of the bitwise OR of zero or more the following symbolic constants, which modify the behav-
       ior of glob():

       GLOB_ERR
              Return upon a read error (because a directory does not have read permission, for  example).   By  default,  glob()
              attempts carry on despite errors, reading all of the directories that it can.

       GLOB_MARK
              Append a slash to each path which corresponds to a directory.

       GLOB_NOSORT
              Don't  sort  the  returned  pathnames.   The  only  reason to do this is to save processing time.  By default, the
              returned pathnames are sorted.

       GLOB_DOOFFS
              Reserve pglob->gl_offs slots at the beginning of the list of strings in pglob->pathv.  The reserved slots  contain
              NULL pointers.

       GLOB_NOCHECK
              If  no  pattern  matches,  return  the  original pattern.  By default, glob() returns GLOB_NOMATCH if there are no
              matches.

       GLOB_APPEND
              Append the results of this call to the vector of results returned by a previous call to glob().  Do not  set  this
              flag on the first invocation of glob().

       GLOB_NOESCAPE
              Don't  allow  backslash  ('\')  to be used as an escape character.  Normally, a backslash can be used to quote the
              following character, providing a mechanism to turn off the special meaning metacharacters.

       flags may also include any of the following, which are GNU extensions and not defined by POSIX.2:

       GLOB_PERIOD
              Allow a leading period to be matched by metacharacters.  By default, metacharacters can't match a leading period.

       GLOB_ALTDIRFUNC
              Use  alternative  functions  pglob->gl_closedir,  pglob->gl_readdir,   pglob->gl_opendir,   pglob->gl_lstat,   and
              pglob->gl_stat for file system access instead of the normal library functions.

       GLOB_BRACE
              Expand  csh(1)  style  brace  expressions of the form {a,b}.  Brace expressions can be nested.  Thus, for example,
              specifying the pattern "{foo/{,cat,dog},bar}" would return the same results as four separate  glob()  calls  using
              the strings: "foo/", "foo/cat", "foo/dog", and "bar".

       GLOB_NOMAGIC
              If  the  pattern contains no metacharacters then it should be returned as the sole matching word, even if there is
              no file with that name.

       GLOB_TILDE
              Carry out tilde expansion.  If a tilde ('~') is the only character in the pattern, or an initial tilde is followed
              immediately  by  a slash ('/'), then the home directory of the caller is substituted for the tilde.  If an initial
              tilde is followed by a username (e.g., "~andrea/bin"), then the tilde and username are  substituted  by  the  home
              directory of that user.  If the username is invalid, or the home directory cannot be determined, then no substitu-
              tion is performed.

       GLOB_TILDE_CHECK
              This provides behavior similar to that of GLOB_TILDE.  The difference is that if the username is invalid,  or  the
              home  directory  cannot  be  determined,  then  instead  of  using  the pattern itself as the name, glob() returns
              GLOB_NOMATCH to indicate an error.

       GLOB_ONLYDIR
              This is a hint to glob() that the caller is interested only in directories that match the pattern.  If the  imple-
              mentation  can  easily  determine  file-type  information, then nondirectory files are not returned to the caller.
              However, the caller must still check that returned files are directories.  (The purpose of this flag is merely  to
              optimize performance when the caller is interested only in directories.)

       If  errfunc  is  not  NULL,  it  will be called in case of an error with the arguments epath, a pointer to the path which
       failed, and eerrno, the value of errno as returned from one of the calls  to  opendir(3),  readdir(3),  or  stat(2).   If
       errfunc returns nonzero, or if GLOB_ERR is set, glob() will terminate after the call to errfunc.

       Upon  successful  return, pglob->gl_pathc contains the number of matched pathnames and pglob->gl_pathv contains a pointer
       to the list of pointers to matched pathnames.  The list of pointers is terminated by a NULL pointer.

       It is possible to call glob() several times.  In that case, the GLOB_APPEND flag has to be set in flags on the second and
       later invocations.

       As  a  GNU  extension,  pglob->gl_flags  is set to the flags specified, ored with GLOB_MAGCHAR if any metacharacters were
       found.

RETURN VALUE
       On successful completion, glob() returns zero.  Other possible returns are:

       GLOB_NOSPACE
              for running out of memory,

       GLOB_ABORTED
              for a read error, and

       GLOB_NOMATCH
              for no found matches.

CONFORMING TO
       POSIX.2, POSIX.1-2001.

NOTES
       The structure elements gl_pathc and gl_offs are declared as size_t in glibc 2.1, as they should be according to  POSIX.2,
       but are declared as int in libc4, libc5 and glibc 2.0.

BUGS
       The  glob()  function  may fail due to failure of underlying function calls, such as malloc(3) or opendir(3).  These will
       store their error code in errno.

EXAMPLE
       One example of use is the following code, which simulates typing

           ls -l *.c ../*.c

       in the shell:

           glob_t globbuf;

           globbuf.gl_offs = 2;
           glob("*.c", GLOB_DOOFFS, NULL, &globbuf);
           glob("../*.c", GLOB_DOOFFS | GLOB_APPEND, NULL, &globbuf);
           globbuf.gl_pathv[0] = "ls";
           globbuf.gl_pathv[1] = "-l";
           execvp("ls", &globbuf.gl_pathv[0]);

SEE ALSO
       ls(1), sh(1), stat(2), exec(3), fnmatch(3), malloc(3), opendir(3), readdir(3), wordexp(3), glob(7)

COLOPHON
       This page is part of release 3.25 of the Linux man-pages project.  A description of the project,  and  information  about
       reporting bugs, can be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.



GNU                                                        2007-10-10                                                    GLOB(3)