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NAME |LIBRARY |SYNOPSIS |DESCRIPTION |RETURN VALUE |ATTRIBUTES |STANDARDS |HISTORY |NOTES |BUGS |EXAMPLES |SEE ALSO |COLOPHON | |
glob(3) Library Functions Manualglob(3)glob, globfree - find pathnames matching a pattern, free memory from glob()
Standard C library (libc,-lc)
#include <glob.h>int glob(const char *restrictpattern, intflags,typeof(int (const char *epath, inteerrno)) *errfunc,glob_t *restrictpglob);void globfree(glob_t *pglob);
Theglob() function searches for all the pathnames matchingpattern according to the rules used by the shell (seeglob(7)). No tilde expansion or parameter substitution is done; if you want these, usewordexp(3). Theglobfree() function frees the dynamically allocated storage from an earlier call toglob(). The results of aglob() call are stored in the structure pointed to bypglob. This structure is of typeglob_t (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 ingl_pathv. */ } glob_t; Results are stored in dynamically allocated storage. The argumentflags is made up of the bitwise OR of zero or more the following symbolic constants, which modify the behavior ofglob():GLOB_ERR Return upon a read error (because a directory does not have read permission, for example). By default,glob() attempts carry on despite errors, reading all of the directories that it can.GLOB_MARK Append a slash to each path which corresponds to a directory.GLOB_NOSORT Don't sort the returned pathnames. The only reason to do this is to save processing time. By default, the returned pathnames are sorted.GLOB_DOOFFS Reservepglob->gl_offs slots at the beginning of the list of strings inpglob->pathv. The reserved slots contain null pointers.GLOB_NOCHECK If no pattern matches, return the original pattern. By default,glob() returnsGLOB_NOMATCHif there are no matches.GLOB_APPEND Append the results of this call to the vector of results returned by a previous call toglob(). Do not set this flag on the first invocation ofglob().GLOB_NOESCAPE Don't allow backslash ('\') to be used as an escape character. Normally, a backslash can be used to quote the following character, providing a mechanism to turn off the special meaning metacharacters.flags may also include any of the following, which are GNU extensions and not defined by POSIX.2:GLOB_PERIOD Allow a leading period to be matched by metacharacters. By default, metacharacters can't match a leading period.GLOB_ALTDIRFUNC Use alternative functionspglob->gl_closedir,pglob->gl_readdir,pglob->gl_opendir,pglob->gl_lstat, andpglob->gl_stat for filesystem access instead of the normal library functions.GLOB_BRACE Expandcsh(1) style brace expressions of the form{a,b}. Brace expressions can be nested. Thus, for example, specifying the pattern "{foo/{,cat,dog},bar}" would return the same results as four separateglob() calls using the strings: "foo/", "foo/cat", "foo/dog", and "bar".GLOB_NOMAGIC If the pattern contains no metacharacters, then it should be returned as the sole matching word, even if there is no file with that name.GLOB_TILDE Carry out tilde expansion. If a tilde ('~') is the only character in the pattern, or an initial tilde is followed immediately by a slash ('/'), then the home directory of the caller is substituted for the tilde. If an initial tilde is followed by a username (e.g., "~andrea/bin"), then the tilde and username are substituted by the home directory of that user. If the username is invalid, or the home directory cannot be determined, then no substitution is performed.GLOB_TILDE_CHECK This provides behavior similar to that ofGLOB_TILDE. The difference is that if the username is invalid, or the home directory cannot be determined, then instead of using the pattern itself as the name,glob() returnsGLOB_NOMATCHto indicate an error.GLOB_ONLYDIR This is ahint toglob() that the caller is interested only in directories that match the pattern. If the implementation can easily determine file-type information, then nondirectory files are not returned to the caller. However, the caller must still check that returned files are directories. (The purpose of this flag is merely to optimize performance when the caller is interested only in directories.) Iferrfunc is not NULL, it will be called in case of an error with the argumentsepath, a pointer to the path which failed, andeerrno, the value oferrno as returned from one of the calls toopendir(3),readdir(3), orstat(2). Iferrfunc returns nonzero, or ifGLOB_ERRis set,glob() will terminate after the call toerrfunc. Upon successful return,pglob->gl_pathc contains the number of matched pathnames andpglob->gl_pathv contains a pointer to the list of pointers to matched pathnames. The list of pointers is terminated by a null pointer. It is possible to callglob() several times. In that case, theGLOB_APPENDflag has to be set inflags on the second and later invocations. As a GNU extension,pglob->gl_flags is set to the flags specified,ored withGLOB_MAGCHARif any metacharacters were found.On successful completion,glob() returns zero. Other possible returns are:GLOB_NOSPACE for running out of memory,GLOB_ABORTED for a read error, andGLOB_NOMATCH for no found matches.
For an explanation of the terms used in this section, seeattributes(7). ┌────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────────────────────────┐ │Interface│Attribute│Value│ ├────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────────────────────────┤ │glob() │ Thread safety │ MT-Unsafe race:utent env sig:ALRM │ │ │ │ timer locale │ ├────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────────────────────────┤ │globfree() │ Thread safety │ MT-Safe │ └────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────────────────────────┘ In the above table,utent inrace:utent signifies that if any of the functionssetutent(3),getutent(3), orendutent(3) are used in parallel in different threads of a program, then data races could occur.glob() calls those functions, so we use race:utent to remind users.
POSIX.1-2008.
POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.2.
The structure elementsgl_pathc andgl_offs are declared assize_t in glibc 2.1, as they should be according to POSIX.2, but are declared asint in glibc 2.0.
Theglob() function may fail due to failure of underlying function calls, such asmalloc(3) oropendir(3). These will store their error code inerrno.
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]);ls(1),sh(1),stat(2),exec(3),fnmatch(3),malloc(3),opendir(3),readdir(3),wordexp(3),glob(7)
This page is part of theman-pages (Linux kernel and C library user-space interface documentation) project. Information about the project can be found at ⟨https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/⟩. If you have a bug report for this manual page, see ⟨https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/docs/man-pages/man-pages.git/tree/CONTRIBUTING⟩. This page was obtained from the tarball man-pages-6.15.tar.gz fetched from ⟨https://mirrors.edge.kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/man-pages/⟩ on 2025-08-11. If you discover any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is a better or more up- to-date source for the page, or you have corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON (which isnot part of the original manual page), send a mail to man-pages@man7.orgLinux man-pages 6.15 2025-05-17glob(3)Pages that refer to this page:locate(1), tar(1), fnmatch(3), wordexp(3), glob(7), pcilib(7), uri(7)
HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 byMichael Kerrisk, author ofThe Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depthLinux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, lookhere. Hosting byjambit GmbH. | |