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Wildcard string compare (globbing)

By , 15 Feb 2005
 

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

This article has no explicit license attached to it but may contain usage terms in the article text or the download files themselves. If in doubt please contact the author via the discussion board below.

A list of licenses authors might use can be found here

About the Author

Jack Handy
Web Developer
United States United States
Member
No Biography provided

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Generalchecking for nullmemberJack Handy13 Mar '03 - 20:38 
I've seen a few people in these boards complain that I didn't check for null pointers in this function. This is a C function and the last time I checked, passing NULL to strcmp or any other C string function will segfault. I'm not saying this is great, and if you wanted to add a check for null, that would be fine. I just don't think that this is a 'bug' (if you can even call it that) worth flaming an otherwise great function.
 
-Jack
 

There are 10 types of people in this world, those that understand binary and those who don't.


GeneralRe: checking for nullsussAnonymous15 Mar '03 - 20:10 
GeneralRe: checking for nullmemberJack Handy18 Mar '03 - 13:25 

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