Shellish(3pm)						User Contributed Perl Documentation					     Shellish(3pm)

NAME

       Regexp::Shellish - Shell-like regular expressions

SYNOPSIS

	  use Regexp::Shellish qw( :all ) ;

	  $re = compile_shellish( 'a/c*d' ) ;

	  ## This next one's like 'a*d' except that it'll
	  ## match 'a/d'.
	  $re = compile_shellish( 'a**d' ) ;

	  ## And here '**' won't match 'a/d', but behaves
	  ## like 'a*d', except for the possibility of high
	  ## cpu time consumption.
	  $re = compile_shellish( 'a**d', { star_star => 0 } ) ;

	  ## The next two result in identical $re1 and $re2.
	  ## The second is a noop so that Regexp references can
	  ## be easily accomodated.
	  $re1 = compile_shellish( 'a{b,c}d' ) ;
	  $re2 = compile_shellish( qr/A(?:a(?:b|c)d)/ ) ;

	  @matches = shellish_glob( $re, @possibilities ) ;

DESCRIPTION

       Provides shell-like regular expressions.  The wildcards provided are "?", "*" and "**", where "**" is like "*" but matches "/".	See "com-
       pile_shellish" for details.

       Case sensitivity and constructs like <**>, "(a*b)", and "{a,b,c}" can be disabled.

       compile_shellish
	   Compiles a string containing a 'shellish' regular expression, returning a Regexp reference.	Regexp references passed in are passed
	   through unmolested.

	   Here are the transformation rules from shellish expression terms to perl regular expression terms:

	      Shellish	Perl RE
	      ========	=======
	      * 	[^/]*
	      ? 	.
	      **	.*		 ## unless { star_star	 => 0 }
	      ...	.*		 ## unless { dot_dot_dot => 0 }

	      ( 	(		 ## unless { parens => 0 }
	      ) 	)		 ## unless { parens => 0 }

	      {a,b,c}	(?:a|b|c)	 ## unless { braces => 0 }

	      a	a		 ## These are de-escaped and
	      *	*		 ## passed to quotemeta()

	   The wildcards treat newlines as normal characters.

	   Parens group in to $1..$n, since they are passed through unmolested (unless option parens => 0 is passed).  This is useless when using
	   glob_shellish(), though.

	   The final parameter can be a hash reference containing options:

	      compile_shellish(
		 '**',
		 {
		    anchors	   => 0,   ## Doesn't put ^ and $ around the
					   ## resulting regexp
		    case_sensitive => 0,   ## Make case insensitive
		    dot_dot_dot    => 0,   ## '...' is now just three '.' chars
		    star_star	   => 0,   ## '**' is now two '*' wildcards
		    parens	   => 0,   ## '(', ')' are now regular chars
		    braces	   => 0,   ## '{', '}' are now regular chars
		 }
	      ) ;

	   No option affects Regexps passed through.

       shellish_glob
	   Pass a regular expression and a list of possible values, get back a list of matching values.

	      my @matches = shellish_glob( '*/*', @possibilities ) ;
	      my @matches = shellish_glob( '*/*', @possibilities, \%options ) ;

AUTHOR

       Barrie Slaymaker <barries@slaysys.com>

perl v5.8.8							    2002-01-24							     Shellish(3pm)