file name matching with wildcard

Question

Hello,

I need to implement something like my own file system. One operation would be the FindFirstFile. I need to check, if the caller passed something like ., sample*.cpp or so. My "file system" implementation provides the list of "files names" as a array of char*.

Is there any Windows function or any source code that implements this file name matching?

Answer 1

There are quite a few such functions around. Here's a directory of various implementations, sorted into recursive and non-recursive, etc.

Answer 2

PathMatchSpec. Though it suffers from the MAX_PATH limitation (i.e. can accept no more than 260 characters). You may be better off implementing your own matcher; it's not a lot of code.

Answer 3

For wildcard name matching using '*' and '?' try this (if you want to avoid boost, use std::tr1::regex):

#include <boost/regex.hpp>
#include <boost/algorithm/string/replace.hpp>

using std::string;

bool MatchTextWithWildcards(const string &text, string wildcardPattern, bool caseSensitive /*= true*/)
{
    // Escape all regex special chars
    EscapeRegex(wildcardPattern);

    // Convert chars '*?' back to their regex equivalents
    boost::replace_all(wildcardPattern, "\\?", ".");
    boost::replace_all(wildcardPattern, "\\*", ".*");

    wildcardPattern = "^" + wildcardPattern + "$";

    boost::regex pattern(wildcardPattern, caseSensitive ? regex::normal : regex::icase);

    return regex_match(text, pattern);
}

void EscapeRegex(string &regex)
{
    boost::replace_all(regex, "\\", "\\\\");
    boost::replace_all(regex, "^", "\\^");
    boost::replace_all(regex, ".", "\\.");
    boost::replace_all(regex, "$", "\\$");
    boost::replace_all(regex, "|", "\\|");
    boost::replace_all(regex, "(", "\\(");
    boost::replace_all(regex, ")", "\\)");
    boost::replace_all(regex, "[", "\\[");
    boost::replace_all(regex, "]", "\\]");
    boost::replace_all(regex, "*", "\\*");
    boost::replace_all(regex, "+", "\\+");
    boost::replace_all(regex, "?", "\\?");
    boost::replace_all(regex, "/", "\\/");
}

Answer 4

Have a look at the POSIX functions fnmatch, glob, and wordexp.