<wmmeta name="Title" value="Globs and Regexps" />
<wmmeta name="Section" value="03-proc_logic" />
<wmmeta name="Score" value="40" />
<wmmeta name="Abstract">
glob patterns, regular expressions and pattern matching
</wmmeta>

A number of WebMake parameters and perl APIs support pattern matching.
This is performed using glob patterns and regular expressions.

Glob Patterns
-------------

These are more-or-less traditional shell- or MS-DOS-like globs, as follows:

<blockquote>
<table>
<tr><td><strong> * </strong></td> <td>matches any number of characters __except__ **/**</td></tr>
<tr><td><strong> ... </strong></td> <td>matches any number of characters, __including__ **/**</td></tr>
<tr><td><strong> ? </strong></td> <td>matches one character</td></tr>
</table>
</blockquote>

This is the default mode of matching. Example globs are:
<strong>*.html</strong>, <strong>.../*.txt</strong>.

Regular Expressions
-------------------

These are perl-style regular expressions. They are differentiated
from glob patterns by prefixing them with **RE:**, for example:
**##RE:^.*\.html&wmdollar;##**.

An introduction to regular expressions is beyond the scope of this
documentation.  For more details, check your perl documentation, or search the
web.

