:mod:!fnmatch --- Unix filename pattern matching

.. module:: fnmatch :synopsis: Unix shell style filename pattern matching.

Source code: :source:Lib/fnmatch.py

.. index:: single: filenames; wildcard expansion

.. index:: pair: module; re

This module provides support for Unix shell-style wildcards, which are not the same as regular expressions (which are documented in the :mod:re module). The special characters used in shell-style wildcards are:

.. index:: single: * (asterisk); in glob-style wildcards single: ? (question mark); in glob-style wildcards single: [] (square brackets); in glob-style wildcards single: ! (exclamation); in glob-style wildcards single: - (minus); in glob-style wildcards

+------------+------------------------------------+ | Pattern | Meaning | +============+====================================+ | * | matches everything | +------------+------------------------------------+ | ? | matches any single character | +------------+------------------------------------+ | [seq] | matches any character in seq | +------------+------------------------------------+ | [!seq] | matches any character not in seq | +------------+------------------------------------+

For a literal match, wrap the meta-characters in brackets. For example, '[?]' matches the character '?'.

.. index:: pair: module; glob

Note that the filename separator ('/' on Unix) is not special to this module. See module :mod:glob for pathname expansion (:mod:glob uses :func:.filter to match pathname segments). Similarly, filenames starting with a period are not special for this module, and are matched by the * and ? patterns.

Unless stated otherwise, "filename string" and "pattern string" either refer to :class:str or ISO-8859-1 encoded :class:bytes objects. Note that the functions documented below do not allow to mix a :class:!bytes pattern with a :class:!str filename, and vice-versa.

Finally, note that :func:functools.lru_cache with a maxsize of 32768 is used to cache the (typed) compiled regex patterns in the following functions: :func:fnmatch, :func:fnmatchcase, :func:.filter, :func:.filterfalse.

.. function:: fnmatch(name, pat)

Test whether the filename string name matches the pattern string pat, returning True or False. Both parameters are case-normalized using :func:os.path.normcase. :func:fnmatchcase can be used to perform a case-sensitive comparison, regardless of whether that's standard for the operating system.

This example will print all file names in the current directory with the extension .txt::

  import fnmatch
  import os

  for file in os.listdir('.'):
      if fnmatch.fnmatch(file, '*.txt'):
          print(file)

.. function:: fnmatchcase(name, pat)

Test whether the filename string name matches the pattern string pat, returning True or False; the comparison is case-sensitive and does not apply :func:os.path.normcase.

.. function:: filter(names, pat)

Construct a list from those elements of the :term:iterable of filename strings names that match the pattern string pat. It is the same as [n for n in names if fnmatch(n, pat)], but implemented more efficiently.

.. function:: filterfalse(names, pat)

Construct a list from those elements of the :term:iterable of filename strings names that do not match the pattern string pat. It is the same as [n for n in names if not fnmatch(n, pat)], but implemented more efficiently.

.. versionadded:: 3.14

.. function:: translate(pat)

Return the shell-style pattern pat converted to a regular expression for using with :func:re.match. The pattern is expected to be a :class:str.

Example:

  >>> import fnmatch, re
  >>>
  >>> regex = fnmatch.translate('*.txt')
  >>> regex
  '(?s:.*\\.txt)\\z'
  >>> reobj = re.compile(regex)
  >>> reobj.match('foobar.txt')
  <re.Match object; span=(0, 10), match='foobar.txt'>

.. seealso::

Module :mod:glob Unix shell-style path expansion.