wildcard matching
Mark A Terribile
mat at mole-end.UUCP
Tue Jan 1 14:34:42 AEST 1991
(On the subject of wildcard patterns whose match is pathalogical in time ...)
> I think that the recursive call is unnessicary. Consider that anything
> trailing the '*' character is ignored anyway, at least in MS-DOS, and
> OS/2. What need is there for further checking if a '*' character is
> encountered? Does that hold true in the UNIX would too?
In UNIX, the `*' is NOT limited to matching a whole name component, but
instead any sequence of characters, anywhere. Thus, one can write
a*b*c
If you want to guarantee efficient matching, then I think you have to generate
a DFSA. If you want to come close, you can put some pathology checks in your
code (like `*' after `*'). And there are publicly available regex-like
matchers, most of which will want .* for a closure on an arbitrary character.
Some of them might not be too hard to change.
--
(This man's opinions are his own.)
From mole-end Mark Terribile
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