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(python2.1-lib.info)fnmatch

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UNIX filename pattern matching
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UNIX shell style filename pattern matching.

This module provides support for UNIX shell-style wildcards, which are
_not_ the same as regular expressions (which are documented in the `re'
module).  The special characters used in shell-style wildcards are:

Pattern                              Meaning
------                               -----
*                                    matches everything
?                                    matches any single character
[SEQ]                                matches any character in SEQ
[!SEQ]                               matches any character not in SEQ

Note that the filename separator (`'/'' on UNIX) is _not_ special to
this module.  See module `glob'  for pathname expansion (`glob' uses
`fnmatch()' to match pathname segments).  Similarly, filenames starting
with a period are not special for this module, and are matched by the
`*' and `?' patterns.

`fnmatch(filename, pattern)'
     Test whether the FILENAME string matches the PATTERN string,
     returning true or false.  If the operating system is
     case-insensitive, then both parameters will be normalized to all
     lower- or upper-case before the comparison is performed.  If you
     require a case-sensitive comparison regardless of whether that's
     standard for your operating system, use `fnmatchcase()' instead.

`fnmatchcase(filename, pattern)'
     Test whether FILENAME matches PATTERN, returning true or false;
     the comparison is case-sensitive.

See also:
     Note: glob UNIX shell-style path expansion.