Modern Python Standard Library Cookbook

There's more...

Practically, fnmatch can be used to recognize pieces of text separated by some kind of constant value.

For example, if I have a pattern that defines the type, name, and value of a variable separated by :, we can recognize it through fnmatch and then declare the described variable:

>>> def declare(decl):
...   if not fnmatch.fnmatch(decl, '*:*:*'):
...     return False
...   t, n, v = decl.split(':', 2)
...   globals()[n] = getattr(__builtins__, t)(v)
...   return True
... 
>>> declare('int:somenum:3')
True
>>> somenum
3
>>> declare('bool:somebool:True')
True
>>> somebool
True
>>> declare('int:a')
False

Where fnmatch obviously shines is with filenames. If you have a list of files, it's easy to extract only those that match a specific pattern: ...