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Wildcard string compare (globbing)

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15 Feb 2005 1.2M   96   144
Matches a string against a wildcard string such as "*.*" or "bl?h.*" etc. This is good for file globbing or to match hostmasks.

Usage:

This is a fast, lightweight, and simple pattern matching function.

if (wildcmp("bl?h.*", "blah.jpg")) {
  //we have a match!
} else {
  //no match =(
}

Function:

int wildcmp(const char *wild, const char *string) {
  // Written by Jack Handy - <A href="mailto:jakkhandy@hotmail.com">jakkhandy@hotmail.com</A>
  const char *cp = NULL, *mp = NULL;

  while ((*string) && (*wild != '*')) {
    if ((*wild != *string) && (*wild != '?')) {
      return 0;
    }
    wild++;
    string++;
  }

  while (*string) {
    if (*wild == '*') {
      if (!*++wild) {
        return 1;
      }
      mp = wild;
      cp = string+1;
    } else if ((*wild == *string) || (*wild == '?')) {
      wild++;
      string++;
    } else {
      wild = mp;
      string = cp++;
    }
  }

  while (*wild == '*') {
    wild++;
  }
  return !*wild;
}

License

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Comments and Discussions

 
GeneralUsing in Artistic Style Pin
jimp023-Apr-08 4:43
jimp023-Apr-08 4:43 
I am using this in Artistic Style, a popular multi-platform code formatter available at SourceForge.

http://astyle.sourceforge.net/

Release 1.22 added directory recursion to the project. Wildcard processing was made internal to the program. Linux has a glob function but Windows doesn't. I just used this for both of them. It let me process both platforms in a similar manner.

A minor change was made for Windows to make the comparison case insensitive. Linux was left case sensitive.

Thanks for making it available. Using this was a lot easier than writing my own. I doubt that mine would have been this sophisticated.

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