Programming Perl, 4th Edition

glob

glob EXPR
glob

This function returns the value of EXPR with filename expansions the way a shell would expand them. This is the internal function implementing the <*> operator.

For historical reasons, the algorithm matches the csh(1)’s style of expansion, not the Bourne shell’s. Files whose first character is a dot (“.”) are ignored unless this character is explicitly matched first. An asterisk (“*”) matches any sequence of any character (including none). A question mark (“?”) matches any one character. A square bracket sequence (“[…]”) specifies a simple character class, like “[chy0–9]”. Character classes may be negated with a circumflex, as in “*.[^oa]”, which matches any file with an extension consisting of a period followed by one character that is neither an “a” nor an “o”. A tilde (“~”) expands to a home directory, as in “~/.*rc” for all the current user’s “rc” files, or “~jane/Mail/*” for all of Jane’s mail files. Braces may be used for alternation, as in “~/.{mail,ex,csh,twm,}rc” to get those particular rc files.

The glob function grandfathers the use of whitespace to separate ...