pattern matching

[MARK H BOTNER]

Can anybody help me with pattern matching?  I'm trying to match
a string against a pattern such as '*' or '*.*' in the same manner that
the 'ls' command uses.  I've tried regex and regexp and I've even downloaded 
regex.Z from uunet.uu.net, but none of these work like I want.  Actually
I probably only need the wildcard characters '*' and '?', but it wouldn't
hurt to have the full expression syntax that the 'ls' command uses. Thanks!
 
P.S. if you have any answer or a subroutine for me, please mail it to me.
My address is:

     mhb at cseg.uucp