Globs

Regular expressions are wonderfully powerful, but sometimes the simpler Unix glob is works just fine. As a bonus, simplere also provides simple glob access.:

if 'globtastic' in Glob('glob*'):
    print "Yes! It is!"
else:
    raise ValueError('YES IT IS')

If you want to search or test against multiple patterns at once, Glob objects take a variable number of patterns. A match is defined as any of the patterns matching.:

img_formats = Glob("*.png", "*.jpeg", "*.jpg", "*.gif")
if filename.lower() in img_formats:
    ... further processing ...

Alternatively, you can splat an existing list into the Glob constructor with Python’s unary star syntax:

img_formats = "*.png *.jpeg *.jpg *.gif".split()
if filename.lower() in Glob(*img_formats):
    ... further processing ...

Case-insensitive glob searches are also available:

bg = InsensitiveGlob('b*')
if 'bubba' in bg:
    assert 'Bubba' in bg

Globs have their own syntax for case insensitive characters, but it can be a pain to use. It may be easier to use the InsensitiveGlob subclass. Or even alias the case-insensitive version as the main one:

from simplere import InsensitiveGlob as Glob

Note

Case folding / case-insensitive searches work well in the ASCII range, but Unicode characters and case folding is more intricate. Basic folding is provided out of the box. It’s quite adequate for mapping against common filename patterns, for example. Those needing more extensive Unicode case folding should consider normalizing strings, as described here. As the tests show, basic Unicode folding works fine everywhere. Using Unicode in glob patterns (not just strings to be matched) works only on Python 3.3 or above.