lastdragon-ru/glob-matcher

Full-featured well-tested glob pattern parser and matcher: basic matching (`?`, `*`), globstar (`**`), extglob (`?(pattern-list)`, `*(pattern-list)`, `+(pattern-list)`, `@(pattern-list)`, `!(pattern-list)`), brace expansion (`{a,b,c}.txt`, `{1..3}.txt`, etc), dotglob, nocasematch, POSIX Named charac

10.0.0 2026-01-17 11:36 UTC

Requires

• php: ^8.3|^8.4
• ext-filter: *
• ext-mbstring: *
• lastdragon-ru/text-parser: 10.0.0
• symfony/polyfill-php84: ^1.31

Requires (Dev)

• lastdragon-ru/phpunit-extensions: 10.0.0
• mockery/mockery: ^1.6.6
• phpunit/phpunit: ^11.2.0|^12.0.0

MIT

• php
• glob
• glob pattern
• glob matcher

README

Full-featured well-tested glob pattern parser and matcher: basic matching (?, *), globstar (**), extglob (?(pattern-list), *(pattern-list), +(pattern-list), @(pattern-list), !(pattern-list)), brace expansion ({a,b,c}.txt, {1..3}.txt, etc), dotglob, nocasematch, POSIX Named character classes ([:alnum:], etc), POSIX Collating symbols ([.ch.], etc), POSIX Equivalence class expressions ([=a=], etc)¹, and escaping². Everything supported 😎

Requirements

Requirement	Constraint	Supported by
PHP	^8.4	HEAD ⋯ 9.2.0
	^8.3	HEAD ⋯ 9.2.0

Installation

composer require lastdragon-ru/glob-matcher

Usage

<?php declare(strict_types = 1);

namespace LastDragon_ru\GlobMatcher\Docs\Examples;

use LastDragon_ru\GlobMatcher\GlobMatcher;
use LastDragon_ru\GlobMatcher\Options;
use LastDragon_ru\LaraASP\Dev\App\Example;

// Full-featured
$fullGlob = new GlobMatcher('/**/{a,b,c}.txt');

Example::dump($fullGlob->match('/a.txt'));
Example::dump($fullGlob->match('/a/b/c.txt'));
Example::dump($fullGlob->match('/a/b/d.txt'));

// Without `globstar`
$noGlobstar = new GlobMatcher('/**/{a,b,c}.txt', new Options(globstar: false));

Example::dump($noGlobstar->match('/a.txt'));
Example::dump($noGlobstar->match('/**/a.txt'));

// Escaping
$escaped = new GlobMatcher('/\\*.txt');

Example::dump(GlobMatcher::escape('/*.txt'));
Example::dump($escaped->match('/a.txt'));
Example::dump($escaped->match('/*.txt'));

The $fullGlob->match('/a.txt') is:

true

The $fullGlob->match('/a/b/c.txt') is:

true

The $fullGlob->match('/a/b/d.txt') is:

false

The $noGlobstar->match('/a.txt') is:

false

The $noGlobstar->match('/**/a.txt') is:

true

The GlobMatcher::escape('/*.txt') is:

"/\*.txt"

The $escaped->match('/a.txt') is:

false

The $escaped->match('/*.txt') is:

true

Globbing

The Glob is used internally by the GlobMatcher to parse the glob pattern(s). You can also use it if you, for example, need access to AST.

<?php declare(strict_types = 1);

namespace LastDragon_ru\GlobMatcher\Docs\Examples;

use LastDragon_ru\GlobMatcher\Glob\Glob;
use LastDragon_ru\LaraASP\Dev\App\Example;

$glob = new Glob('/**/**/?.txt');

Example::dump((string) $glob->regex);
Example::dump($glob->node);

The (string) $glob->regex is:

"#^(?:/)(?:(?:(?<=^|/)(?:(?!\.)(?:(?=.))[^/]*?)(?:(?:/|$)|(?=/|$)))*?)(?:(?!\.)(?:(?=.)(?:[^/])(?:\.txt)))$#us"

The $glob->node is:

LastDragon_ru\GlobMatcher\Glob\Ast\GlobNode {
  +children: [
    LastDragon_ru\GlobMatcher\Glob\Ast\SegmentNode {},
    LastDragon_ru\GlobMatcher\Glob\Ast\GlobstarNode {
      +count: 2
    },
    LastDragon_ru\GlobMatcher\Glob\Ast\NameNode {
      +children: [
        LastDragon_ru\GlobMatcher\Glob\Ast\QuestionNode {},
        LastDragon_ru\GlobMatcher\Glob\Ast\StringNode {
          +string: ".txt"
        },
      ]
    },
  ]
}

Available options:

<?php declare(strict_types = 1);

namespace LastDragon_ru\GlobMatcher\Glob;

use LastDragon_ru\GlobMatcher\MatchMode;

readonly class Options {
    public function __construct(
        /**
         * If set, the `**` will match all files and zero or more directories
         * and subdirectories.
         *
         * The same as `globstar`.
         */
        public bool $globstar = true,
        /**
         * Enables extended globbing (`?(pattern-list)`, etc).
         *
         * The same as `extglob`.
         */
        public bool $extended = true,
        /**
         * Filenames beginning with a dot are hidden and not matched by default
         * unless the glob begins with a dot or this option set to `true`.
         *
         * The same as `dotglob`.
         */
        public bool $hidden = false,
        public MatchMode $matchMode = MatchMode::Match,
        /**
         * The same as `nocasematch`.
         */
        public bool $matchCase = true,
    ) {
        // empty
    }
}

Brace expansion

You can also expand braces without globbing:

<?php declare(strict_types = 1);

namespace LastDragon_ru\GlobMatcher\Docs\Examples;

use LastDragon_ru\GlobMatcher\BraceExpander\BraceExpander;
use LastDragon_ru\LaraASP\Dev\App\Example;

use function iterator_to_array;

$expander = new BraceExpander('{a,{0..10..2},c}.txt');

Example::dump(iterator_to_array($expander));
Example::dump($expander->node);

The iterator_to_array($expander) is:

[
  "a.txt",
  "0.txt",
  "2.txt",
  "4.txt",
  "6.txt",
  "8.txt",
  "10.txt",
  "c.txt",
]

The $expander->node is:

LastDragon_ru\GlobMatcher\BraceExpander\Ast\BraceExpansionNode {
  +children: [
    LastDragon_ru\GlobMatcher\BraceExpander\Ast\SequenceNode {
      +children: [
        LastDragon_ru\GlobMatcher\BraceExpander\Ast\BraceExpansionNode {
          +children: [
            LastDragon_ru\GlobMatcher\BraceExpander\Ast\StringNode {
              +string: "a"
            },
          ]
        },
        LastDragon_ru\GlobMatcher\BraceExpander\Ast\BraceExpansionNode {
          +children: [
            LastDragon_ru\GlobMatcher\BraceExpander\Ast\IntegerSequenceNode {
              +start: "0"
              +end: "10"
              +increment: 2
            },
          ]
        },
        LastDragon_ru\GlobMatcher\BraceExpander\Ast\BraceExpansionNode {
          +children: [
            LastDragon_ru\GlobMatcher\BraceExpander\Ast\StringNode {
              +string: "c"
            },
          ]
        },
      ]
    },
    LastDragon_ru\GlobMatcher\BraceExpander\Ast\StringNode {
      +string: ".txt"
    },
  ]
}

Constraints

We are using PCRE to match and the lastdragon-ru/text-parser package to parse glob patterns. Both are limits encoding to UTF-8 only.

Path always checks as is. Unlike bash, there is no special processing of quotes/parentheses inside the pattern.

Only / allowed as a path separator. The \ used by Windows is not supported (it is used as an escape character).

The \ is always used as an escape character, so [\b] will be treated as [b] (\ is gone), [\\b] should be used instead.

The /, . and .. always match explicitly. Thus, the a/** will not match a, but will a/ (slightly different from bash). Also, the / cannot be escaped and should not be inside the character class, extended pattern, etc. This means that, e.g. [a/b] will be parsed as [a, /, b] and not as characters a/b.

Gratitude

Huge thanks to micromatch and especially picomatch project for a vast set of tests of all features of glob.

Upgrading

Please follow Upgrade Guide.

Contributing

Please use the main repository to report issues, send pull requests, or ask questions.

Footnotes

1. Parsing only, PCRE limitation 🤷‍♂️ ↩

2. Except /, see Constraints for more details. ↩