note 88250 added to function.glob

Since I feel this is rather vague and non-helpful, I thought I'd make a post detailing the mechanics of the glob regex. glob uses two special symbols that act like sort of a blend between a meta-character and a quantifier. These two characters are the * and ? The ? matches 1 of any character except a / The * matches 0 or more of any character except a / If it helps, think of the * as the pcre equivalent of .* and ? as the pcre equivalent of the dot (.) Note: * and ? function independently from the previous character. For instance, if you do glob("a*.php") on the following list of files, all of the files starting with an 'a' will be returned, but * itself would match: a.php // * matches nothing aa.php // * matches the second 'a' ab.php // * matches 'b' abc.php // * matches 'bc' b.php // * matches nothing, because the starting 'a' fails bc.php // * matches nothing, because the starting 'a' fails bcd.php // * matches nothing, because the starting 'a' fails It does not match just a.php and aa.php as a 'normal' regex would, because it matches 0 or more of any character, not the character/class/group before it. Executing glob("a?.php") on the same list of files will only return aa.php and ab.php because as mentioned, the ? is the equivalent of pcre's dot, and is NOT the same as pcre's ?, which would match 0 or 1 of the previous character. glob's regex also supports character classes and negative character classes, using the syntax [] and [^]. It will match any one character inside [] or match any one character that is not in [^]. With the same list above, executing glob("[ab]*.php) will return (all of them): a.php // [ab] matches 'a', * matches nothing aa.php // [ab] matches 'a', * matches 2nd 'a' ab.php // [ab] matches 'a', * matches 'b' abc.php // [ab] matches 'a', * matches 'bc' b.php // [ab] matches 'b', * matches nothing bc.php // [ab] matches 'b', * matches 'c' bcd.php // [ab] matches 'b', * matches 'cd' glob("[ab].php") will return a.php and b.php glob("[^a]*.php") will return: b.php // [^a] matches 'b', * matches nothing bc.php // [^a] matches 'b', * matches 'c' bcd.php // [^a] matches 'b', * matches 'cd' glob("[^ab]*.php") will return nothing because the character class will fail to match on the first character. You can also use ranges of characters inside the character class by having a starting and ending character with a hyphen in between. For example, [a-z] will match any letter between a and z, [0-9] will match any (one) number, etc.. glob also supports limited alternation with {n1, n2, etc..}. You have to specify GLOB_BRACE as the 2nd argument for glob in order for it to work. So for example, if you executed glob("{a,b,c}.php", GLOB_BRACE) on the following list of files: a.php b.php c.php all 3 of them would return. Note: using alternation with single characters like that is the same thing as just doing glob("[abc].php"). A more interesting example would be glob("te{xt,nse}.php", GLOB_BRACE) on: tent.php text.php test.php tense.php text.php and tense.php would be returned from that glob. ---- Server IP: 64.71.164.2 Probable Submitter: 96.35.236.175 ---- Manual Page -- http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.glob.php Edit -- https://master.php.net/note/edit/88250 Del: integrated -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/88250/integrated Del: useless -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/88250/useless Del: bad code -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/88250/bad+code Del: spam -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/88250/spam Del: non-english -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/88250/non-english Del: in docs -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/88250/in+docs Del: other reasons-- https://master.php.net/note/delete/88250 Reject -- https://master.php.net/note/reject/88250 Search -- https://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php