Meziantou.Framework

Getting started

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Install the package

Add the Meziantou.Framework.Globbing package to a project:

dotnet package add Meziantou.Framework.Globbing

The examples of this documentation omit the using directives. They need using Meziantou.Framework.Globbing;. They check their results with assertions such as Assert.True, which show what each call returns.

Check whether a path matches

Parse the pattern once, then test paths against it:

var glob = Glob.Parse("src/**/*.txt", GlobDialect.Standard);
Assert.True(glob.IsMatch("src/folder/file.txt"));
Assert.False(glob.IsMatch("docs/file.txt"));
  • Glob.Parse takes the pattern and its dialect. GlobDialect.Standard is the syntax described in Pattern syntax; the others follow git, MSBuild and fnmatch.
  • src/**/*.txt matches the .txt files of src and of all its subdirectories. ** matches zero or more directories, and * matches any characters of one file name.
  • Paths use / as a separator. On Windows, \ is a separator too. A pattern that starts with a / matches absolute paths, and the others match relative paths.

Ignore the case

Matching is case-sensitive by default. Pass GlobOptions.IgnoreCase to ignore the case:

Glob glob = Glob.Parse("src/**/*.txt", GlobDialect.Standard, GlobOptions.IgnoreCase);
Assert.True(glob.IsMatch("src/abc.txt"));
Assert.True(glob.IsMatch("SRC/a/b/abc.TXT"));
Assert.False(glob.IsMatch("src/abc.png"));

Enumerate the files that match

EnumerateFiles lists the files of a directory that match the pattern, and returns their full paths. The pattern is matched against the path of each file relative to that directory:

using var rootDirectory = TemporaryDirectory.Create();
rootDirectory.CreateEmptyFile("src/a/abc.txt");
rootDirectory.CreateEmptyFile("src/a/abc.png");
rootDirectory.CreateEmptyFile("docs/readme.txt");

// Enumerate files that match the glob in the folder rootDirectory
Glob glob = Glob.Parse("src/**/*.txt", GlobDialect.Standard);
var files = new List<string>();
foreach (var file in glob.EnumerateFiles(rootDirectory.FullPath))
{
    files.Add(file);
}

Assert.Equal([Path.Combine(rootDirectory.FullPath, "src", "a", "abc.txt")], files);

The example creates the files in a temporary directory with the Meziantou.Framework.TemporaryDirectory package. Only the directories that can hold a match are visited: here, the enumeration does not look inside docs.

Next steps