10.7. glob — Unix style pathname pattern expansion — Python documentation
10.7. glob — Unix style pathname pattern expansion
Source code: :source:`Lib/glob.py`
The glob module finds all the pathnames matching a specified pattern according to the rules used by the Unix shell, although results are returned in arbitrary order. No tilde expansion is done, but *
, ?
, and character ranges expressed with []
will be correctly matched. This is done by using the os.listdir() and fnmatch.fnmatch() functions in concert, and not by actually invoking a subshell. Note that unlike fnmatch.fnmatch(), glob treats filenames beginning with a dot (.
) as special cases. (For tilde and shell variable expansion, use os.path.expanduser() and os.path.expandvars().)
For a literal match, wrap the meta-characters in brackets. For example, '[?]'
matches the character '?'
.
- glob.glob(pathname)
- Return a possibly-empty list of path names that match pathname, which must be a string containing a path specification. pathname can be either absolute (like
/usr/src/Python-1.5/Makefile
) or relative (like../../Tools/*/*.gif
), and can contain shell-style wildcards. Broken symlinks are included in the results (as in the shell).
- glob.iglob(pathname)
Return an iterator which yields the same values as glob() without actually storing them all simultaneously.
New in version 2.5.
For example, consider a directory containing only the following files: 1.gif
, 2.txt
, and card.gif
. glob() will produce the following results. Notice how any leading components of the path are preserved.
>>> import glob
>>> glob.glob('./[0-9].*')
['./1.gif', './2.txt']
>>> glob.glob('*.gif')
['1.gif', 'card.gif']
>>> glob.glob('?.gif')
['1.gif']
If the directory contains files starting with .
they won’t be matched by default. For example, consider a directory containing card.gif
and .card.gif
:
>>> import glob
>>> glob.glob('*.gif')
['card.gif']
>>> glob.glob('.c*')
['.card.gif']