11.7.glob — Unix style pathname pattern expansion¶

Source code:Lib/glob.py

Theglob module finds all the pathnames matching a specified patternaccording to the rules used by the Unix shell, although results are returned inarbitrary order. No tilde expansion is done, but*,?, and characterranges expressed with[] will be correctly matched. This is done by usingtheos.scandir() andfnmatch.fnmatch() functions in concert, andnot by actually invoking a subshell. Note that unlikefnmatch.fnmatch(),glob treats filenames beginning with a dot (.) as special cases.(For tilde and shell variable expansion, useos.path.expanduser() andos.path.expandvars().)

For a literal match, wrap the meta-characters in brackets.For example,'[?]' matches the character'?'.

glob.glob(pathname,*,recursive=False)¶

Return a possibly-empty list of path names that matchpathname, which must bea string containing a path specification.pathname can be either absolute(like/usr/src/Python-1.5/Makefile) or relative (like../../Tools/*/*.gif), and can contain shell-style wildcards. Brokensymlinks are included in the results (as in the shell).

Ifrecursive is true, the pattern “**” will match any files and zero ormore directories and subdirectories. If the pattern is followed by anos.sep, only directories and subdirectories match.

Note

Using the “**” pattern in large directory trees may consumean inordinate amount of time.

Changed in version 3.5:Support for recursive globs using “**”.

glob.iglob(pathname,*,recursive=False)¶

Return aniterator which yields the same values asglob()without actually storing them all simultaneously.

glob.escape(pathname)¶

Escape all special characters ('?','*' and'[').This is useful if you want to match an arbitrary literal string that mayhave special characters in it. Special characters in drive/UNCsharepoints are not escaped, e.g. on Windowsescape('//?/c:/Quovadis?.txt') returns'//?/c:/Quovadis[?].txt'.

New in version 3.4.

For example, consider a directory containing the following files:1.gif,2.txt,card.gif and a subdirectorysubwhich contains only the file3.txt.glob() will producethe following results. Notice how any leading components of the path arepreserved.

>>>importglob>>>glob.glob('./[0-9].*')['./1.gif', './2.txt']>>>glob.glob('*.gif')['1.gif', 'card.gif']>>>glob.glob('?.gif')['1.gif']>>>glob.glob('**/*.txt',recursive=True)['2.txt', 'sub/3.txt']>>>glob.glob('./**/',recursive=True)['./', './sub/']

If the directory contains files starting with. they won’t be matched bydefault. For example, consider a directory containingcard.gif and.card.gif:

>>>importglob>>>glob.glob('*.gif')['card.gif']>>>glob.glob('.c*')['.card.gif']