Wildmat
is part of libinn(3).
Wildmat
compares the
text
against the
pattern
and
returns non-zero if the pattern matches the text.
The pattern is interpreted according to rules similar to shell filename
wildcards, and not as a full regular expression such as those handled by the
grep(1)
family of programs or the
regex(3)
or
regexp(3)
set of routines.
The pattern is interpreted as follows:
\x
Turns off the special meaning of
x
and matches it directly; this is used mostly before a question mark or
asterisk, and is not special inside square brackets.
?
Matches any single character.
*
Matches any sequence of zero or more characters.
[x...y]
Matches any single character specified by the set
x...y.
A minus sign may be used to indicate a range of characters.
That is,
[0-5abc]
is a shorthand for
[012345abc].
More than one range may appear inside a character set;
[0-9a-zA-Z._]
matches almost all of the legal characters for a host name.
The close bracket,
],
may be used if it is the first character in the set.
The minus sign,
-,
may be used if it is either the first or last character in the set.
[^x...y]
This matches any character
not
in the set
x...y,
which is interpreted as described above.
For example,
[^]-]
matches any character other than a close bracket or minus sign.
HISTORY
Written by Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> in 1986, and posted to Usenet
several times since then, most notably in comp.sources.misc in
March, 1991.
Lars Mathiesen <thorinn@diku.dk> enhanced the multi-asterisk failure
mode in early 1991.
Rich and Lars increased the efficiency of star patterns and reposted it
to comp.sources.misc in April, 1991.
Robert Elz <kre@munnari.oz.au> added minus sign and close bracket handling
in June, 1991.
