glob (programming)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| This article does not cite any references or sources. (December 2007) Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. |
glob() is a Unix library function that expands file names using a pattern matching notation reminiscent of regular expression syntax but without the expressive power of true regular expressions. The word "glob" is also used as a noun when discussing a particular pattern, e.g. "use the glob *.log to match all those log files".
The term glob is now used to refer more generally to limited pattern matching facilities of this kind in other contexts:
- Larry Wall's Programming Perl discusses glob in the context of the Perl language.
- Tcl contains both true regular expression matching facilities and a more limited kind of pattern matching often described as globbing.
- Python has a glob module in the standard library which performs wildcard pattern matching on filenames