glob — Unix style pathname pattern expansion¶Source code: Lib/glob.py
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.scandir() 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
fnmatch