11.7. "glob" — Unix style pathname pattern expansion
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**Source code:** Lib/glob.py

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The "glob" module finds all the pathnames matching a specified pattern
according to the rules used by the Unix shell, although results are
returned in arbitrary order.  No tilde expansion is done, but "*",
"?", and character ranges expressed with "[]" will be correctly
matched.  This is done by using the "os.listdir()" and
"fnmatch.fnmatch()" functions in concert, and not by actually invoking
a subshell.  Note that unlike "fnmatch.fnmatch()", "glob" treats
filenames beginning with a dot (".") as special cases. (For tilde and
shell variable expansion, use "os.path.expanduser()" and
"os.path.expandvars()".)

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

See also: The "pathlib" module offers high-level path objects.

glob.glob(pathname, *, recursive=False)

   Return a possibly-empty list of path names that match *pathname*,
   which must be a string containing a path specification. *pathname*
   can be either absolute (like "/usr/src/Python-1.5/Makefile") or
   relative (like "../../Tools/*/*.gif"), and can contain shell-style
   wildcards. Broken symlinks are included in the results (as in the
   shell).

   If *recursive* is true, the pattern “"**"” will match any files and
   zero or more directories and subdirectories.  If the pattern is
   followed by an "os.sep", only directories and subdirectories match.

   Note: Using the “"**"” pattern in large directory trees may
     consume an inordinate amount of time.

   Changed in version 3.5: Support for recursive globs using “"**"”.

glob.iglob(pathname, recursive=False)

   Return an *iterator* which yields the same values as "glob()"
   without actually storing them all simultaneously.

glob.escape(pathname)

   Escape all special characters ("'?'", "'*'" and "'['"). This is
   useful if you want to match an arbitrary literal string that may
   have special characters in it.  Special characters in drive/UNC
   sharepoints are not escaped, e.g. on Windows "escape('//?/c:/Quo
   vadis?.txt')" returns "'//?/c:/Quo vadis[?].txt'".

   New in version 3.4.

For example, consider a directory containing the following files:
"1.gif", "2.txt", "card.gif" and a subdirectory "sub" which contains
only the file "3.txt".  "glob()" will produce the following results.
Notice how any leading components of the path are preserved.

   >>> import glob
   >>> glob.glob('./[0-9].*')
   ['./1.gif', './2.txt']
   >>> glob.glob('*.gif')
   ['1.gif', 'card.gif']
   >>> glob.glob('?.gif')
   ['1.gif']
   >>> glob.glob('**/*.txt', recursive=True)
   ['2.txt', 'sub/3.txt']
   >>> glob.glob('./**/', recursive=True)
   ['./', './sub/']

If the directory contains files starting with "." they won’t be
matched by default. For example, consider a directory containing
"card.gif" and ".card.gif":

   >>> import glob
   >>> glob.glob('*.gif')
   ['card.gif']
   >>> glob.glob('.c*')
   ['.card.gif']

See also:

  Module "fnmatch"
     Shell-style filename (not path) expansion
