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



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

SYNOPSIS
       #include 

       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, which  is  a
       glob_t  which  is  declared  in    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 parameter flags is made up of bitwise OR of zero or more the following  symbolic  con-
       stants, which modify the of behaviour of glob():

       GLOB_ERR
              which  means to return upon read error (because a directory does not have read per-
              mission, for example),

       GLOB_MARK
              which means to append a slash to each path which corresponds to a directory,

       GLOB_NOSORT
              which means don't sort the returned pathnames (they are by default),

       GLOB_DOOFFS
              which means that pglob->gl_offs slots will be reserved at the beginning of the list
              of strings in pglob->pathv,

       GLOB_NOCHECK
              which means that, if no pattern matches, to return the original pattern,

       GLOB_APPEND
              which  means  to append to the results of a previous call.  Do not set this flag on
              the first invocation of glob().

       GLOB_NOESCAPE
              which means that meta characters cannot be quoted by backslashes.

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

       GLOB_PERIOD
              which means that a leading period can be matched by meta characters,

       GLOB_ALTDIRFUNC
              which  means  that  alternative  functions  pglob->gl_closedir,  pglob->gl_readdir,
              pglob->gl_opendir, pglob->gl_lstat, and pglob->gl_stat are  used  for  file  system
              access instead of the normal library functions,

       GLOB_BRACE
              which means that csh(1) style brace expresions {a,b} are expanded,

       GLOB_NOMAGIC
              which means that the pattern is returned if it contains no metacharacters,

       GLOB_TILDE
              which means that tilde expansion is carried out, and

       GLOB_ONLYDIR
              which means that only directories are matched.

       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(), readdir(), or stat().  If errfunc returns non-zero, 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  a  pointer to the list of matched pathnames.  The first pointer after the
       last pathname is NULL.

       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.

EXAMPLES
       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]);

CONFORMING TO
       POSIX.2

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

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

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



GNU                                         1999-09-12                                    GLOB(3)