STRMATCH(3)C LIBRARY FUNCTIONSSTRMATCH(3)

NAME

strmatch - match shell file patterns

SYNOPSIS

int strmatch(char* s, char* p)

char* submatch(char* s, char* p, int m)

DESCRIPTION

strmatch compares the string s with the shell pattern p and returns 1 for match and 0 otherwise. submatch does a leading substring match of the shell pattern p with the string s. If m is 0 then the match is minimal, otherwise a maximal match is done. A pointer to the first character after the matched substring is returned, 0 if there is no match.

Except for & and !, each shell pattern has an equivalent egrep(1) construct. 

     	sh pattern	egrep RE	description
     	*		.*		0 or more chars
     	?		.		any single char
     	[.]		[.]		char class
     	[!.]		[^.]		negated char class
     	*(.)		(.)*		0 or more of
     	+(.)		(.)+		1 or more of
     	?(.)		(.)?		0 or 1 of
     	(.)		(.)		1 of
     	@(.)		(.)		1 of
     	a|b		a|b		a or b
     	a&b				a and b
     	!(.)				none of
\ is used to escape *, ?, (, |, &, ), [, and \ outside of [...].

SEE ALSO

grep(1)

BUGS

An unbalanced ) terminates the top level pattern.
Nested & and ! constructs are non-intuitive and are computationally intensive.

November 07, 2006