pathmatch

A directory/filename pattern match utility for the Windows command line.

(NOTE: This project is in a bit of a mess right now, as I've been modifying a bunch of code and then put everything on the backburner for several years. It's actually the topmost project I keep meaning to dive back into and finish for the next release, but no idea when that will actually happen. Just writing this down because I noticed some new forks of this codebase.)

Description

pathmatch is a tool to match files and directories against a path pattern that supports ?, *, and ... wildcards. These wildcards match the following patterns:

Token	Description
?	Matches any single character
*	Matches zero or more of any character, except '/'.
**	Matches zero or more of any character, including '/'.
...	Matches zero or more of any character, including '/'.

Examples

pathmatch a?c

Matches abc, axc, and aac. Does not match ac, abbc, or a/c.

a*c

Matches "ac", "abc" and "azzzzzzzc". Does not match "a/c".

foo...bar

Matches "foobar", "fooxbar", and "fooz/blaz/rebar". Does not match "fo/obar", "fobar" or "food/bark".

pathmatch ....obj

Matches all files anywhere in the current hierarchy that end in ".obj". Note that the first three periods are interpreted as "...", and the fourth one is interpreted as a literal "." character.

Help Output

pathmatch  v0.2.1  https://github.com/hollasch/pathmatch/
pathmatch: Report files and directories matching the specified pattern
Usage: pathmatch [<options>] <pattern> ... <pattern>

    `pathmatch` finds and reports all files and directories matching wildcard
    patterns. These patterns may contain the special characters '?', '*', and
    '...'. The '?' pattern matches any single character, '*' matches multiple
    characters except slashes, and '...' matches multiple characters including
    slashes. For example, the following patterns all match the file
    "abc\def\ghi\jkl": "abc\d?f\??i\jkl", "abc\*\*\jkl", "abc\...\jkl", and
    "ab...kl".

    The following command options are supported:

Command Options:
    --absolute, -a
        Report absolute paths. By default, reported paths are relative to the
        current working directory.

    --files, -f
        Report files only (no directories). To report directories only, append
        a slash to the pattern.

    --help, /?, -?, -h
        Print help information.

    --slash [/|\], -s[/|\]
        Specifies the slash direction to be reported. By default, slashes will
        be back slashes. Use "-s/" to report paths with forward slashes, "-s\"
        to report backslashes. A space is allowed before the slash.

    --version, -v
        Print version information.

    --preview
        Print preview of planned command options.

Building

This project uses the CMake build tool. CMake is a meta-build system that locates and uses your local development tools to build the project if possible.

To build, first install CMake. Then go to the project root directory and run the following command:

cmake -B build

This will locate your installed development tools and configure your project build in the build/ directory. After that, whenever you want a new build, run this command:

cmake --build build

This will build a debug version of the project, located in build/Debug/. To build a release version, run

cmake --build build --config release

You can find the built release executable in build/Release/.

Testing

The pathmatch utility uses the PathMatch::PathMatcher class, which uses the wildComp function. This set is tested at two points: one executable for unit tests of the PathMatch::PathMatcher class, and a set of acceptance tests for the pathmatch utility.

The PathMatcher unit tests are contained in src/PathMatcher/pathmatcherTest.cpp. Currently, these just run a bunch of different patterns which are normalized and printed out for visual examination.

The pathmatch acceptance tests are a Windows command script that run various workflows from the test/ directory, using the test/test-tree/ directory. To run the tests, use test/run.cmd at a Windows command prompt. The output is compared against golden image results (test/*.gold), reporting expected matches and unexpected changes, which can then either be rejected or accepted as the new golden image.

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Steve Hollasch / [email protected] / https://github.com/hollasch/pathmatch