10.8. "fnmatch" — Unix filename pattern matching
************************************************

**Source code:** Lib/fnmatch.py

======================================================================

This module provides support for Unix shell-style wildcards, which are
*not* the same as regular expressions (which are documented in the
"re" module).  The special characters used in shell-style wildcards
are:

+--------------+--------------------------------------+
| Pattern      | Meaning                              |
+==============+======================================+
| "*"          | matches everything                   |
+--------------+--------------------------------------+
| "?"          | matches any single character         |
+--------------+--------------------------------------+
| "[seq]"      | matches any character in *seq*       |
+--------------+--------------------------------------+
| "[!seq]"     | matches any character not in *seq*   |
+--------------+--------------------------------------+

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

Note that the filename separator ("'/'" on Unix) is *not* special to
this module.  See module "glob" for pathname expansion ("glob" uses
"filter()" to match pathname segments).  Similarly, filenames starting
with a period are not special for this module, and are matched by the
"*" and "?" patterns.

fnmatch.fnmatch(filename, pattern)

   Test whether the *filename* string matches the *pattern* string,
   returning "True" or "False".  Both parameters are case-normalized
   using "os.path.normcase()". "fnmatchcase()" can be used to perform
   a case-sensitive comparison, regardless of whether that’s standard
   for the operating system.

   This example will print all file names in the current directory
   with the extension ".txt":

      import fnmatch
      import os

      for file in os.listdir('.'):
          if fnmatch.fnmatch(file, '*.txt'):
              print file

fnmatch.fnmatchcase(filename, pattern)

   Test whether *filename* matches *pattern*, returning "True" or
   "False"; the comparison is case-sensitive and does not apply
   "os.path.normcase()".

fnmatch.filter(names, pattern)

   Return the subset of the list of *names* that match *pattern*. It
   is the same as "[n for n in names if fnmatch(n, pattern)]", but
   implemented more efficiently.

   New in version 2.2.

fnmatch.translate(pattern)

   Return the shell-style *pattern* converted to a regular expression
   for using with "re.match()".

   Example:

   >>> import fnmatch, re
   >>>
   >>> regex = fnmatch.translate('*.txt')
   >>> regex
   '.*\\.txt\\Z(?ms)'
   >>> reobj = re.compile(regex)
   >>> reobj.match('foobar.txt')
   <_sre.SRE_Match object at 0x...>

See also:

  Module "glob"
     Unix shell-style path expansion.
