[Python-Dev] * and ? in fnmatch

[Guido van Rossum]

> I have recently been playing with the fnmatch module, and learned that *
> and ? as considered by 'fnmatch.translate()' match *all* characters,
> including slashes, colons, backslashes -- in short, whatever happens to
> be "special" characters for pathnames on the current platform.
> 
> In other words, "foo?bar.py" matches both "foo_bar.py" and "foo/bar.py".
> 
> This is not the way any Unix shells that I know of work, nor is it how
> the wildcard-expanding MS-DOS system calls that I dimly remember from a
> decade or so back worked.  I dunno how wildcard expansion is done under
> Windows nowadays, but I wouldn't expect * and ? to match colons or
> backslashes there any more than I expect them to match slash under a
> Unix shell.
> 
> So is this a bug or a feature?

It's a feature.  As I recall, I carefully implemented the standard
fnmatch() as it existed 10 years ago.  Use the glob module for
matching Unix pathname syntax -- or use os.path.split().

I'm not wildly fond of the GNU way of adding 10 more options to each
function...  KISS.

(And yes, I'm in a bad mood today. :-( )

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)