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minimatch

A minimal matching utility.

Build Status

This is the matching library used internally by npm.

Eventually, it will replace the C binding in node-glob.

It works by converting glob expressions into JavaScript RegExp objects.

Usage

```javascript var minimatch = require("minimatch")

minimatch("bar.foo", ".foo") // true! minimatch("bar.foo", ".bar") // false! minimatch("bar.foo", "*.+(bar|foo)", { debug: true }) // true, and noisy! ```

Features

Supports these glob features:

See:

Minimatch Class

Create a minimatch object by instanting the minimatch.Minimatch class.

javascript var Minimatch = require("minimatch").Minimatch var mm = new Minimatch(pattern, options)

Properties

Methods

All other methods are internal, and will be called as necessary.

Functions

The top-level exported function has a cache property, which is an LRU cache set to store 100 items. So, calling these methods repeatedly with the same pattern and options will use the same Minimatch object, saving the cost of parsing it multiple times.

minimatch(path, pattern, options)

Main export. Tests a path against the pattern using the options.

javascript var isJS = minimatch(file, "*.js", { matchBase: true })

minimatch.filter(pattern, options)

Returns a function that tests its supplied argument, suitable for use with Array.filter. Example:

javascript var javascripts = fileList.filter(minimatch.filter("*.js", {matchBase: true}))

minimatch.match(list, pattern, options)

Match against the list of files, in the style of fnmatch or glob. If nothing is matched, and options.nonull is set, then return a list containing the pattern itself.

javascript var javascripts = minimatch.match(fileList, "*.js", {matchBase: true}))

minimatch.makeRe(pattern, options)

Make a regular expression object from the pattern.

Options

All options are false by default.

debug

Dump a ton of stuff to stderr.

nobrace

Do not expand {a,b} and {1..3} brace sets.

noglobstar

Disable ** matching against multiple folder names.

dot

Allow patterns to match filenames starting with a period, even if the pattern does not explicitly have a period in that spot.

Note that by default, a/**/b will not match a/.d/b, unless dot is set.

noext

Disable "extglob" style patterns like +(a|b).

nocase

Perform a case-insensitive match.

nonull

When a match is not found by minimatch.match, return a list containing the pattern itself if this option is set. When not set, an empty list is returned if there are no matches.

matchBase

If set, then patterns without slashes will be matched against the basename of the path if it contains slashes. For example, a?b would match the path /xyz/123/acb, but not /xyz/acb/123.

nocomment

Suppress the behavior of treating # at the start of a pattern as a comment.

nonegate

Suppress the behavior of treating a leading ! character as negation.

flipNegate

Returns from negate expressions the same as if they were not negated. (Ie, true on a hit, false on a miss.)

Comparisons to other fnmatch/glob implementations

While strict compliance with the existing standards is a worthwhile goal, some discrepancies exist between minimatch and other implementations, and are intentional.

If the pattern starts with a ! character, then it is negated. Set the nonegate flag to suppress this behavior, and treat leading ! characters normally. This is perhaps relevant if you wish to start the pattern with a negative extglob pattern like !(a|B). Multiple ! characters at the start of a pattern will negate the pattern multiple times.

If a pattern starts with #, then it is treated as a comment, and will not match anything. Use \# to match a literal # at the start of a line, or set the nocomment flag to suppress this behavior.

The double-star character ** is supported by default, unless the noglobstar flag is set. This is supported in the manner of bsdglob and bash 4.1, where ** only has special significance if it is the only thing in a path part. That is, a/**/b will match a/x/y/b, but a/**b will not.

If an escaped pattern has no matches, and the nonull flag is set, then minimatch.match returns the pattern as-provided, rather than interpreting the character escapes. For example, minimatch.match([], "\\*a\\?") will return "\\*a\\?" rather than "*a?". This is akin to setting the nullglob option in bash, except that it does not resolve escaped pattern characters.

If brace expansion is not disabled, then it is performed before any other interpretation of the glob pattern. Thus, a pattern like +(a|{b),c)}, which would not be valid in bash or zsh, is expanded first into the set of +(a|b) and +(a|c), and those patterns are checked for validity. Since those two are valid, matching proceeds.