What does ** mean in Phing?

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+1 Q:

What does ** mean in Phing?

The Phing User's Guide uses the following description of the ** file filter:

"Two asterisks (**) may include above the "border" of the directory separator."

I'm having a hard time deciphering what this really means. Can somebody please translate this into English?

+3 A:

** matches any character while * matches anything except for a directory separator.

For example, /path/** will match either of these:

/path/file
/path/to/some/file
/path/to/some/other/file

However, /path/* will only match the first one.

Martin 2010-02-26 16:25:28

Here's an example from the Phing User Guide:"**/*.ent.xml fits to all files that end with ent.xml in all subdirectories of the directory specified with the dir attribute of the <fileset> tag. However, it will not include any files that are directly in the base directory of the file set."This one was confounding me, but now I think I get it. The reason it doesn't match any files in the base directory has nothing to do with the nature of ** itself, but is because the filter starts with **/, which I take it to mean that the files must be in a subdirectory. Is that correct?

elmonty 2010-02-26 16:44:59

Yes, the path `filename.ent.xml` (a file in the base directory) does not match the pattern `**/*.ent.xml` since it doesn't contain any `/` character.

Martin 2010-02-26 16:52:29

Thank you. The description of ** from the user guide is really bad. Your description makes more sense.

elmonty 2010-02-26 17:06:34

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What does ** mean in Phing?

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