Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!newstop!texsun!convex!tchrist
From: tchrist@convex.com (Tom Christiansen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: <*glob*>: arguments too long
Message-ID: <100207@convex.convex.com>
Date: 23 Feb 90 14:43:36 GMT
Sender: news@convex.com
Reply-To: tchrist@convex.Com (Tom Christiansen)
Organization: Convex Computer Corp, Richardson, TX
Lines: 39

I've been running into this a bunch lately, which has taken me to
writing a quick, drop-in replacement for <*.bar> type globbing.  I
think I'd really like Larry to look at internalizing file globbing.
I think Piet van Oostrum has sent patches for this.

Here's a routine that is a drop-in replacement for globbing
that DOES NOT INVOLVE multi-level directories, although it
does check for those.  It's pretty quick.

    sub glob {
	local($expr) = @_;
	local(@retlist) = ();
	local(*METADIR);  		 	# paranoia

	die "glob: null expr" unless $expr;	# assert

	if ($expr =~ /\//) {
	    warn "glob: \"$expr\" has slashes, punting...";
	    return <${expr}>;
	}

	$expr =~ s/\*/.*/g;
	$expr =~ s/\?/./g;

	unless (opendir(METADIR, '.')) {
	    warn "glob: can't opendir ".": $!";
	} else {
	    @retlist = sort grep(/$expr/o, grep(!/^\./, readdir(METADIR)));
	    closedir METADIR;
	}
	return @retlist;
    }

--tom
--

    Tom Christiansen                       {uunet,uiucdcs,sun}!convex!tchrist 
    Convex Computer Corporation                            tchrist@convex.COM
		 "EMACS belongs in <sys/errno.h>: Editor too big!"