Support recursive wildcards in pathlib.PurePath.match()

[JonWalsh]

BPO	29249
Nosy	@pitrou, @RonnyPfannschmidt, @serhiy-storchaka, @wimglenn, @JulienPalard, @virtuald, @andunai, @barneygale, @eumiro

^{Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.}

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GitHub fields:

assignee = None
closed_at = None
created_at = <Date 2017-01-12.10:19:54.004>
labels = ['3.8', 'type-feature', '3.7', '3.9', 'docs']
title = 'Pathlib glob ** bug'
updated_at = <Date 2021-06-04.19:42:17.687>
user = 'https://bugs.python.org/JonWalsh'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2021-06-04.19:42:17.687>
actor = 'christian.heimes'
assignee = 'docs@python'
closed = False
closed_date = None
closer = None
components = ['Documentation']
creation = <Date 2017-01-12.10:19:54.004>
creator = 'Jon Walsh'
dependencies = []
files = []
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 29249
keywords = []
message_count = 11.0
messages = ['285297', '285305', '285308', '285311', '285323', '307854', '307866', '325735', '361147', '382535', '386795']
nosy_count = 12.0
nosy_names = ['pitrou', 'docs@python', 'Ronny.Pfannschmidt', 'serhiy.storchaka', 'wim.glenn', 'mdk', 'virtuald', 'Jon Walsh', 'Andrew Dunai', 'Isaac Muse', 'barneygale', 'eumiro']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = None
stage = 'needs patch'
status = 'open'
superseder = None
type = 'enhancement'
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue29249'
versions = ['Python 3.5', 'Python 3.6', 'Python 3.7', 'Python 3.8', 'Python 3.9']

Linked PRs

• GH-73435: Implement recursive wildcards in pathlib.PurePath.match() #101398
• GH-73435: Add pathlib.PurePath.full_match() #114350

[JonWalsh]

>>> from pathlib import Path
>>> Path("a/b/c/d/e.txt").match('a/*/**/*')
False

[andunai]

Isn't this intended? According to https://docs.python.org/2/library/glob.html and wiki, typical UNIX glob pattern does not have the reqursive matching operator (**).

[tiran]

The ticket is not about glob but about pathlib.

Pathlib supports ** directory globbing, but it's only documented as prefix globbing, https://docs.python.org/3/library/pathlib.html#pathlib.Path.glob

[serhiy-storchaka]

** is supported not just as a prefix. Path('./Lib').glob('**/.py') emits the same paths as Path('.').glob('Lib/**/.py'). But ** is supported only in glob(), not in match(). The support of ** in match() is not documented. Would be worth to document explicitly that it is not supported.

[JonWalsh]

Seems a bit strange to not have glob() and match() working the same though. Is there any reason for that?

[virtuald]

I just ran into this also. It seems like a very strange omission that match and glob don't support the same patterns (and I'm surprised that they don't share more code).

[virtuald]

Because of backwards compatibility (despite a statement saying it's not guaranteed for pathlib), I think the best approach would be to create a 'globmatch' function for PurePath instead of modifying the match function, and document that the match function does a different kind of matching.

This isn't a patch for cpython per se (ironically, don't have time for that this month...), but here's a MIT-licensed gist that patches pathlib2 and adds a globmatch function to it, plus associated tests extracted from pathlib2 and my own ** related tests. Works for me, feel free to do with it as you wish.

https://gist.github.com/virtuald/dd0373bf3f26ec0730adf1da0fb929bb