STRMATCH(3)

NAME
strmatch - match shell file patterns

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION
strmatch compares the string s with the shell pattern p and returns 1 for match and 0 otherwise. submatch does a leading substring match of the shell pattern p with the string s. If flags is 0 then the match is minimal, otherwise a maximal match is done. A pointer to the first character after the matched substring is returned, 0 if there is no match.

Except for & and !, each shell pattern has an equivalent egrep(1) construct.
    	sh pattern	egrep RE	description
    	*		.*		0 or more chars
    	?		.		any single char
    	[.]		[.]		char class
    	[!.]		[^.]		negated char class
    	*(.)		(.)*		0 or more of
    	+(.)		(.)+		1 or more of
    	?(.)		(.)?		0 or 1 of
    	(.)		(.)		1 of
    	@(.)		(.)		1 of
    	a|b		a|b		a or b
    	a&b				a and b
    	!(.)				none of
is used to escape *, ?, (, |, &, ), [, and \ outside of [...].

SEE ALSO
grep(1)

BUGS
An unbalanced terminates the top level pattern.
Nested and constructs are non-intuitive and are computationally intensive.