GNU Info

(libc.info)Flags for Globbing

---

Next: More Flags for Globbing Prev: Calling Glob Up: Globbing

---

Enter node , (file) or (file)node

Flags for Globbing
------------------

   This section describes the flags that you can specify in the FLAGS
argument to `glob'.  Choose the flags you want, and combine them with
the C bitwise OR operator `|'.

`GLOB_APPEND'
     Append the words from this expansion to the vector of words
     produced by previous calls to `glob'.  This way you can
     effectively expand several words as if they were concatenated with
     spaces between them.

     In order for appending to work, you must not modify the contents
     of the word vector structure between calls to `glob'.  And, if you
     set `GLOB_DOOFFS' in the first call to `glob', you must also set
     it when you append to the results.

     Note that the pointer stored in `gl_pathv' may no longer be valid
     after you call `glob' the second time, because `glob' might have
     relocated the vector.  So always fetch `gl_pathv' from the
     `glob_t' structure after each `glob' call; *never* save the
     pointer across calls.

`GLOB_DOOFFS'
     Leave blank slots at the beginning of the vector of words.  The
     `gl_offs' field says how many slots to leave.  The blank slots
     contain null pointers.

`GLOB_ERR'
     Give up right away and report an error if there is any difficulty
     reading the directories that must be read in order to expand
     PATTERN fully.  Such difficulties might include a directory in
     which you don't have the requisite access.  Normally, `glob' tries
     its best to keep on going despite any errors, reading whatever
     directories it can.

     You can exercise even more control than this by specifying an
     error-handler function ERRFUNC when you call `glob'.  If ERRFUNC
     is not a null pointer, then `glob' doesn't give up right away when
     it can't read a directory; instead, it calls ERRFUNC with two
     arguments, like this:

          (*ERRFUNC) (FILENAME, ERROR-CODE)

     The argument FILENAME is the name of the directory that `glob'
     couldn't open or couldn't read, and ERROR-CODE is the `errno'
     value that was reported to `glob'.

     If the error handler function returns nonzero, then `glob' gives up
     right away.  Otherwise, it continues.

`GLOB_MARK'
     If the pattern matches the name of a directory, append `/' to the
     directory's name when returning it.

`GLOB_NOCHECK'
     If the pattern doesn't match any file names, return the pattern
     itself as if it were a file name that had been matched.
     (Normally, when the pattern doesn't match anything, `glob' returns
     that there were no matches.)

`GLOB_NOSORT'
     Don't sort the file names; return them in no particular order.
     (In practice, the order will depend on the order of the entries in
     the directory.)  The only reason _not_ to sort is to save time.

`GLOB_NOESCAPE'
     Don't treat the `\' character specially in patterns.  Normally,
     `\' quotes the following character, turning off its special meaning
     (if any) so that it matches only itself.  When quoting is enabled,
     the pattern `\?' matches only the string `?', because the question
     mark in the pattern acts like an ordinary character.

     If you use `GLOB_NOESCAPE', then `\' is an ordinary character.

     `glob' does its work by calling the function `fnmatch' repeatedly.
     It handles the flag `GLOB_NOESCAPE' by turning on the
     `FNM_NOESCAPE' flag in calls to `fnmatch'.