Glob Matcher

A Glob is a common way to match strings of characters against rules. An Untangle glob is similar to the syntax commonly used on Microsoft OSs to match filenames (example: "rm *.exe").

A glob matcher has two special characters: "*" means 0 or more of any characters (excluding return charater) and "?" means exactly 1 of any character (excluding return character).

Example	String	Description
String	XYZ	matches "XYZ" but NOT "xYZ" and NOT "XYZZ"
String with *	X*Z	matches "XZ" and "XYZ" and "XYYZ" and "XyyyabcZ" but NOT "xYZ" and NOT "XYZA"
String with *	X*Z*	matches "XZ" and "XYZ" and "XYYZ" and "XyyyabcZ" and "XYZA" but NOT "xYZ"
String with ?	X?Z	matches "XYZ" and "XyZ" but NOT match "XZ" or "XYYZ"
List of Globs	X,Z	matches "X" and "Z" but NOT match "Y" or "X,Z"

Globs are often used in rules like URL rules and filename rules to match various strings. The left and rights side are implicitly anchored. If you wish to match if a string contains the match you will need to use "*foo*".

For those familiar with regular expression you can derive the glob equivalent by doing the following:

• replace "." with "\." to escape the special meaning of "." in regular expressions
• replace "?" with "." to match any character
• replace "*" with ".*" to match zero or more characters

Note:

• "*" matches all values except null/unset
• "" matches null and nothing else