glob pattern matching in .NET

Question

Is there a built-in mechanism in .NET to match patterns other than Regular Expressions? I\'d like to match using UNIX style (glob) wildcards (* = any number of any characte

Answer 1

I wrote a solution that does it. It does not depend on any library and it does not support "!" or "[]" operators. It supports the following search patterns:

C:\Logs\*.txt

C:\Logs\**\*P1?\**\asd*.pdf

    /// 

    /// Finds files for the given glob path. It supports ** * and ? operators. It does not support !, [] or ![] operators
    /// 
    /// the path
    /// The files that match de glob
    private ICollection FindFiles(string path)
    {
        List result = new List();
        //The name of the file can be any but the following chars '<','>',':','/','\','|','?','*','"'
        const string folderNameCharRegExp = @"[^\<\>:/\\\|\?\*" + "\"]";
        const string folderNameRegExp = folderNameCharRegExp + "+";
        //We obtain the file pattern
        string filePattern = Path.GetFileName(path);
        List pathTokens = new List(Path.GetDirectoryName(path).Split('\\', '/'));
        //We obtain the root path from where the rest of files will obtained 
        string rootPath = null;
        bool containsWildcardsInDirectories = false;
        for (int i = 0; i < pathTokens.Count; i++)
        {
            if (!pathTokens[i].Contains("*")
                && !pathTokens[i].Contains("?"))
            {
                if (rootPath != null)
                    rootPath += "\\" + pathTokens[i];
                else
                    rootPath = pathTokens[i];
                pathTokens.RemoveAt(0);
                i--;
            }
            else
            {
                containsWildcardsInDirectories = true;
                break;
            }
        }
        if (Directory.Exists(rootPath))
        {
            //We build the regular expression that the folders should match
            string regularExpression = rootPath.Replace("\\", "\\\\").Replace(":", "\\:").Replace(" ", "\\s");
            foreach (string pathToken in pathTokens)
            {
                if (pathToken == "**")
                {
                    regularExpression += string.Format(CultureInfo.InvariantCulture, @"(\\{0})*", folderNameRegExp);
                }
                else
                {
                    regularExpression += @"\\" + pathToken.Replace("*", folderNameCharRegExp + "*").Replace(" ", "\\s").Replace("?", folderNameCharRegExp);
                }
            }
            Regex globRegEx = new Regex(regularExpression, RegexOptions.Compiled | RegexOptions.CultureInvariant | RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);
            string[] directories = Directory.GetDirectories(rootPath, "*", containsWildcardsInDirectories ? SearchOption.AllDirectories : SearchOption.TopDirectoryOnly);
            foreach (string directory in directories)
            {
                if (globRegEx.Matches(directory).Count > 0)
                {
                    DirectoryInfo directoryInfo = new DirectoryInfo(directory);
                    result.AddRange(directoryInfo.GetFiles(filePattern));
                }
            }

        }
        return result;
    }