I need some code to do regular expression and wildcard matching.
Make sure you recognize the difference between classic regular expressions (variants of which are used in such Unix utilities as ed and grep), and filename wildcards (variants of which are used by most operating systems).
There are a number of packages available for matching regular expressions. Most packages use a pair of functions, one for ``compiling'' the regular expression, and one for ``executing'' it (i.e. matching strings against it). Look for header files named <regex.h> or <regexp.h>, and functions called regcmp/regex, regcomp/regexec, or re_comp/re_exec. (These functions may exist in a separate regexp library.) A popular, freely-redistributable regexp package by Henry Spencer is available from ftp.cs.toronto.edu in pub/regexp.shar.Z or in several other archives. The GNU project has a package called rx. See also question 18.16.
Filename wildcard matching (sometimes called ``globbing'') is done in a variety of ways on different systems. On Unix, wildcards are automatically expanded by the shell before a process is invoked, so programs rarely have to worry about them explicitly. Under MS-DOS compilers, there is often a special object file which can be linked in to a program to expand wildcards while argv is being built. Several systems (including MS-DOS and VMS) provide system services for listing or opening files specified by wildcards. Check your compiler/library documentation.
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This page by Steve Summit // Copyright 1995 // mail feedback