# fnmatch vs regex

3 messages from 2014-03-05 to 2014-03-05. Participants: Vincenzo di Cicco, Junio C Hamano, Jacopo Notarstefano.
Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/36068

## Vincenzo di Cicco, 2014-03-05 19:55

Subject: fnmatch vs regex
Message-ID: <CAKOJyXc2dezciw=x=-Gw3qjt3Sd=V=2Dy_ARZ25kmjYHULT5_w@mail.gmail.com>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/CAKOJyXc2dezciw%3Dx%3D-Gw3qjt3Sd%3DV%3D2Dy_ARZ25kmjYHULT5_w%40mail.gmail.com

```
Hi there, I'm NaN.
Recently I enrolled to this mailing list thanks to the GSoC.
I've looked the Ideas Page but -unfortunately- some projects are very
difficult for me.
I've looked the source code and I've seen that to perform a search
with a pattern to the branches list (and other commands) git uses
fnmatch() and so supports the glob pattern.
I haven't never massively used the branches or the tags to have the
necessity to filter in a particolar way the results, and the asterisk
has always worked very well.
But: why the decision to support the Blob Pattern instead of the
Regular Expressions?
With your experiences can a patch like this improve this side?

Thanks for the awesome work,
NaN

```

## Junio C Hamano, 2014-03-05 21:27

Subject: Re: fnmatch vs regex
Message-ID: <xmqqk3c8fia3.fsf@gitster.dls.corp.google.com>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/xmqqk3c8fia3.fsf%40gitster.dls.corp.google.com
In-Reply-To: <CAKOJyXc2dezciw=x=-Gw3qjt3Sd=V=2Dy_ARZ25kmjYHULT5_w@mail.gmail.com>

```
Vincenzo di Cicco <enzodicicco@gmail.com> writes:

> But: why the decision to support the Blob Pattern instead of the
> Regular Expressions?

s/Blob/glob/;

Matching pathnames using fnmatch/glob is a fine UNIX tradition;
because we generally consider refnames also as "pathname-like"
things, we use fnmatch for them, too (what we actually use is
wildmatch, which can be thought of as a natural evolution of it).

```

## Jacopo Notarstefano, 2014-03-05 21:28

Subject: Re: fnmatch vs regex
Message-ID: <CAL0uuq0UaB0NF8rBP3TWGOUrT_jCMnFKKvweJ9d+XeYWPw300w@mail.gmail.com>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/CAL0uuq0UaB0NF8rBP3TWGOUrT_jCMnFKKvweJ9d%2BXeYWPw300w%40mail.gmail.com
In-Reply-To: <CAKOJyXc2dezciw=x=-Gw3qjt3Sd=V=2Dy_ARZ25kmjYHULT5_w@mail.gmail.com>

```
On Wed, Mar 5, 2014 at 8:55 PM, Vincenzo di Cicco <enzodicicco@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi there, I'm NaN.
> Recently I enrolled to this mailing list thanks to the GSoC.
> I've looked the Ideas Page but -unfortunately- some projects are very
> difficult for me.

Hi Vincenzo!

I also got interested in contributing to Git because of GSoC. I
encourage you to try doing a microproject: the coding part can be
*really* trivial. For example, mine just involved deleting lines
(after, of course, explaining why they weren't needed anymore). If you
are having trouble following the instructions in
Documentation/SubmittingPatches I recommend this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLBrBBImJt4.

```