package path_glob

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package path_glob
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A globber is a boolean combination of basic expressions indented to work on pathnames. Known operators are or, and and not, which may also be written |, & and ~. There are also constants true and false (or 1 and 0). Expression can be grouped using parentheses.

  • true matches anything,
  • false matches nothing,
  • basic or basic matches strings matching either one of the basic expressions,
  • basic and basic matches strings matching both basic expressions,
  • not basic matches string that don't match the basic expression,
  • basic matches strings that match the basic expression.

A basic expression can be a constant string enclosed in double quotes, in which double quotes must be preceded by backslashes, or a glob pattern enclosed between a < and a >,

  • "string" matches the literal string string,
  • <glob> matches the glob pattern glob.

A glob pattern is an anchored regular expression in a shell-like syntax. Most characters stand for themselves. Character ranges are given in usual shell syntax between brackets. The star * stands for any sequence of characters. The joker '?' stands for exactly one, unspecified character. Alternation is achieved using braces {.

  • glob1glob2 matches strings who have a prefix matching glob1 and the corresponding suffix matching glob2.
  • a matches the string consisting of the single letter a. The alphabet is restricted to [a-z][A-Z][0-9]_-. .
  • \\a matches any single letter a.
  • {glob1,glob2} matches strings matching glob1 or glob2.
  • ? matches any one-letter string, excluding the slash.
  • * matches all strings not containing a slash, including the empty one.
  • **/ matches the empty string, or any string ending with a slash.
  • /** matches any string starting with a slash, or the empty string.
  • /**/ matches any string starting and ending with a slash.
  • [c1-c2c3-c4...] matches characters in the range c1 to c2 inclusive, or in the range c3 to c4 inclusive. For instance [a-fA-F0-9] matches hexadecimal digits. To match the dash, put it at the end.
type fast_pattern

The type representing fast patterns. Do not attempt to compare them, as they get on-the-fly optimizations.

val fast_pattern_of_pattern : Ast.pattern -> fast_pattern

The type representing globbers. Do not attempt to compare them, as they get on-the-fly optimizations.

val parse : ?dir:string -> string -> globber

parse ~dir pattern will parse the globber pattern pattern, optionally prefixing its patterns with dir.

exception Parse_error of string

A descriptive exception raised when an invalid glob pattern description is given.

val eval : globber -> string -> bool

eval g u returns true if and only if the string u matches the given glob expression. Avoid re-parsing the same pattern, since the automaton implementing the pattern is optimized on the fly. The first few evaluations are done using a time-inefficient but memory-efficient algorithm. It then compiles the pattern into an efficient but more memory-hungry data structure.