On 2023-04-13, Dr Rainer Woitok wrote: > Greetings, > > does anybody know about some command to convert shell globs (shell pat- > terns) into regular expressions? Back in the old Unix days there was a > "glob" command, but "e-files" only turns up a GNU library. > > I am aware of Python's "fnmatch.translate()" function, but this -- of > course -- returns a Python style regular expression which I can't use > together with "grep" or "gawk". So using this function would require > moving and converting the "grep" and "gawk" specific code from my Shell > script into a separate Python script. This would be doable, if neces- > sary, but I would prefer staying with just my Shell script. > > Any pointers heartily welcome :-)
What did the "glob" utility you remember do? Sources at TUHS have a "glob" utility, but it seems to execute a given command after expanding the glob, instead of outputting a translation (which I think is what you're describing?). Do you remember which system did you see this on? Perhaps this could be a question for alt.folklore.computers or a comp.unix.* group on USENET too! The "glob" utility at TUHS: https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V5/usr/source/s1/glob.c and the source for its online manual page from V6: https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V6%2Fusr%2Fman%2Fman8%2Fglob.8 -- Nuno Silva
