[Python-ideas] Add OS-dependent automatic glob support

[Chris Angelico]

On Tue, Jan 6, 2015 at 10:57 AM, Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info> wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 06, 2015 at 04:14:38AM +1100, Chris Angelico wrote:
>> On Tue, Jan 6, 2015 at 4:10 AM, Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info> wrote:
>> > * If you want to apply globs to something other than file names,
>> >   the right module to use would probably be globbing.generic
>> >   (or possible fnmatch directly).
>>
>> Which module should you use [to match non-existing files]?
>
> fnmatch. I've had a look inside glob.py and it calls os.listdir
> directly, so you cannot use glob to match things other than actual
> existing files. (Well, I suppose you could if you monkey-patched the
> module, but lets not go there.)
>
> fnmatch, on the other hand, provides the right tool for matching names
> other than actual file names: fnmatch.filter(names, pattern). (Well,
> almost the right tool -- it has a few issues too.)

Ugh. That's poor naming, then. If this new globbing module happens, I
would be a strong +1 on having 'globbing.generic' (or somesuch) to do
this kind of thing, if only to fix the name.

ChrisA