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

NAME

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

SYNOPSIS

       #include <glob.h>

       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 <glob.h> 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 constants, which modify the of behaviour of glob():

       GLOB_ERR
	      which means to return upon read error (because a directory does not have read permission, 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 path-
       names.  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 invoca-
       tions.

       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)