# Glob patterns w/ **; zero or more? 2 messages from 2023-04-16 to 2023-04-16. Participants: Maël Nison, Andreas Schwab. Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/59605 ## Maël Nison, 2023-04-16 18:40 Subject: Glob patterns w/ **; zero or more? Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/CANiF4iAaWB9j%2BMma0-yfp6GvoQuM4k_OBAXn0keR%2BvCg8PQjmA%40mail.gmail.com ``` Hi, I noticed that, in a repo with a single `main.c` file, `git ls-files './**/main.c'` (note the surrounding quotes, to avoid shell globbing) returns no result even though `git ls-files main.c` does. It however can find any `main.c` file located in a subdirectory, suggesting `**` is interpreted as "one or more" rather than "zero or more". Can you confirm it'd be a bug? I checked in both 2.38 and 2.40. For reference, the documentation is explicit that `**` is "zero or more", not "one or more", and it matches the behaviour from other glob implementations (emphasis mine): > A slash followed by two consecutive asterisks then a slash matches ***zero or > more directories***. For example, "a/**/b" matches "a/b", "a/x/b", "a/x/y/b" and so on. Also quoting the bash documentation for reference: > globstar > If set, the pattern ‘**’ used in a filename expansion context will match all files > and zero or more directories and subdirectories. If the pattern is followed by > a ‘/’, only directories and subdirectories match. ``` ## Andreas Schwab, 2023-04-16 19:04 Subject: Re: Glob patterns w/ **; zero or more? Message-ID: <87ttxfsl5w.fsf@igel.home> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/87ttxfsl5w.fsf%40igel.home In-Reply-To: ``` On Apr 16 2023, Maël Nison wrote: > I noticed that, in a repo with a single `main.c` file, `git ls-files > './**/main.c'` (note the surrounding quotes, to avoid shell globbing) > returns no result even though `git ls-files main.c` does. It however > can find any `main.c` file located in a subdirectory, suggesting `**` > is interpreted as "one or more" rather than "zero or more". Can you > confirm it'd be a bug? I checked in both 2.38 and 2.40. By default, pathspec matching does not take "**" specially, making it equivalen to "*", but it can match "/". Thus "./**/main.c" is the same as "*/main.c" (the leading "./" always matches) and matches paths with at least one "/" in it (thus "*/main.c" does not match "main.c"). If you use ":(glob)./**/main.c", it uses shell glob matching, where "**" is special and "/**/" can match "/", but "*" does not match "/". -- Andreas Schwab, schwab@linux-m68k.org GPG Key fingerprint = 7578 EB47 D4E5 4D69 2510 2552 DF73 E780 A9DA AEC1 "And now for something completely different." ```