6.24 glob -- Unix style pathname pattern expansion

Python PEP

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6.24 `glob` -- Unix style pathname pattern expansion

The glob module finds all the pathnames matching a specified pattern according to the rules used by the Unix shell. No tilde expansion is done, but *, ?, and character ranges expressed with [] will be correctly matched. This is done by using the os.listdir() and fnmatch.fnmatch() functions in concert, and not by actually invoking a subshell. (For tilde and shell variable expansion, use os.path.expanduser() and os.path.expandvars().)

glob( pathname): Returns a possibly-empty list of path names that match pathname, which must be a 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. Broken symlinks are included in the results (as in the shell).

For example, consider a directory containing only the following files: 1.gif, 2.txt, and card.gif. glob() will produce the following results. Notice how any leading components of the path are preserved.

>>> import glob
>>> glob.glob('./[0-9].*')
['./1.gif', './2.txt']
>>> glob.glob('*.gif')
['1.gif', 'card.gif']
>>> glob.glob('?.gif')
['1.gif']