Pattern Matching — ParsePattern, MatchPattern

Overview

AmigaDOS provides built-in wildcard/pattern matching for file operations. Patterns are compiled into token streams via ParsePattern and matched via MatchPattern.

Wildcard Syntax

Pattern	Meaning	Example
`?`	Match exactly one character	`file?.txt` matches `file1.txt`
`#`	Match zero or more of the following	`#?.info` matches anything ending in `.info`
`#?`	Match any string (equivalent to `*`)	`#?` matches everything
`(a\\|b)`	Alternation — match a or b	`(read\\|write)`
`~`	Negation — match if NOT	`~(#?.info)` matches non-info files
`[abc]`	Character class	`[abc]` matches a, b, or c
`[a-z]`	Character range	`[0-9]` matches digits
`'`	Quote next character literally	`'#` matches literal `#`

API

/* dos/dos.h — NDK39 */

/* Compile a pattern into tokenised form: */
LONG ParsePattern(STRPTR pat, STRPTR buf, LONG buflen);
/* Returns: 1 = pattern has wildcards, 0 = plain string, -1 = error */

/* Test a name against a compiled pattern: */
BOOL MatchPattern(STRPTR pat_compiled, STRPTR name);

/* Case-insensitive variants: */
LONG ParsePatternNoCase(STRPTR pat, STRPTR buf, LONG buflen);
BOOL MatchPatternNoCase(STRPTR pat_compiled, STRPTR name);

Usage Example

char pat[256], buf[256];
LONG is_wild;

is_wild = ParsePatternNoCase("#?.txt", pat, sizeof(pat));
if (is_wild >= 0) {
    if (MatchPatternNoCase(pat, "readme.txt"))
        Printf("Match!\n");
    if (!MatchPatternNoCase(pat, "readme.doc"))
        Printf("No match\n");
}

Common Patterns

Pattern	Matches
`#?`	Everything (wildcard all)
`#?.info`	All `.info` icon files
`~(#?.info)`	Everything except `.info` files
`(#?.c\\|#?.h)`	All C source and header files
`file[0-9]`	`file0` through `file9`

References

NDK39: dos/dos.h
ADCD 2.1: ParsePattern, MatchPattern