: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:: 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:: 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.

.. function:: fnmatch(filename, pattern)

Test whether the filename string matches the pattern string, returning :const:True or :const: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(filename, pattern)

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

.. function:: filter(names, pattern)

Return the subset of the list of names that match pattern. It is the same as [n for n in names if fnmatch(n, pattern)], but implemented more efficiently.

.. function:: translate(pattern)

Return the shell-style pattern converted to a regular expression for using with :func:re.match.

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.