globbing supports character classes now and ^EN string building construct to escape glob patterns

 * globbing is fnmatch(3) compatible, now on every supported platform.
 * which means that escaping of glob patterns is possible now.
   ^ENq has been introduced to ease this task.
 * This finally allows you to pass unmodified filenames to EB.
   Previously it was impossible to open file names containing glob wildcards.
 * this was achieved by moving from GPattern to GRegex as the underlying
   implementation.
 * The glob pattern is converted to a regular expression before being
   compiled to a GRegex.
   This turned out to be trickier than anticipated (~140 lines of code)
   and has a runtime penalty of course (complexity is O(2*n) over the
   pattern length).
   It is IMHO still better than the alternatives, like importing
   external code from libiberty, which is potentially non-cross-platform.
 * Using GRegex also opens the potential of supporting brace "expansions"
   later in the form of glob pattern constructs
   (they won't actually expand but match alternatives).
 * is_glob_pattern() has been simplified and moved to Globber::is_pattern().
   It makes sense to reuse the Globber class namespace instead of using
   plain functions for functions working on glob patterns.
 * The documentation has a new subsection on glob patterns now.
 * Testsuite extended with glob pattern test cases

1 files changed, 54 insertions, 4 deletions

diff --git a/doc/sciteco.7.template b/doc/sciteco.7.template
index 6ed89db..9bf0cc0 100644
--- a/doc/sciteco.7.template
+++ b/doc/sciteco.7.template
@@ -1466,7 +1466,7 @@ Expands to the string contents of the Q-Register specified by
 \fIq\fP.
 .TP
 .BI ^E@ q
-Expands to the quoted string contents of the Q-Register
+Expands to the shell-quoted string contents of the Q-Register
 specified by \fIq\fP.
 The quoting will be such that an UNIX98 \(lq/bin/sh\(rq will
 interpret the quoted string like the original contents of
@@ -1475,6 +1475,14 @@ This is useful when generating UNIX shell code or when passing
 registers with unknown contents as parameters to external
 commands using the \fBEC\fP command.
 .TP
+.BI ^EN q
+Expands to the string contents of the Q-Register specified
+by \fIq\fP but with glob pattern wildcards escaped.
+This is useful for commands accepting glob patterns to
+pass file names which will not be interpreted further
+(e.g. if the file name may contain \(lq*\(rq or other
+special characters).
+.TP
 .BI ^E c
 All remaining \fB^E\fP combinations are passed down
 unmodified.
@@ -1624,15 +1632,57 @@ user's\fP home directory using the value of the
 \(lq$HOME\(rq environment register.
 Thus the \(lq~\fIusername\fP\(rq syntax is \fBnot\fP supported.
 .LP
-Last but not least, some commands accept glob patterns
-in their file name arguments to refer to multiple files at once
-(see \fBEN\fP command).
 There is special immediate editing command support for
 file and directory path arguments (e.g. tab-completions and
 specialized rub-out/rub-in commands).
 These are documented in the section
 .BR "COMMANDLINE EDITING" .
 .
+.SS Glob Patterns
+.
+Some commands accept glob patterns
+in their file name arguments to perform pattern matching
+on arbitrary strings or to work with multiple existing files
+(see \fBEN\fP and \fBEB\fP commands).
+\*(ST glob patterns mimic the POSIX
+.BR fnmatch (3)
+syntax, but work uniformly across all platforms.
+The following wildcard constructs are supported:
+.TP
+.B *
+Matches an arbitary number of characters or no character
+at all.
+.TP
+.B ?
+Matches a single arbitrary character.
+.TP
+.BI [ set ]
+Matches one character in the given character \fIset\fP.
+For instance \(lq[ch]\(rq matches both \(lqc\(rq and \(lqh\(rq.
+A hyphen may be used to specify character ranges as in
+\(lq[0-9]\(rq to match all decimal digits.
+Within a character class, the \(lq*\(rq and \(lq?\(rq wildcards
+have no special meanings and represent their corresponding
+characters.
+To include a hypen in the \fIset\fP, write it first or last.
+To include a closing bracket in the \fIset\fP, write it first,
+as in \(lq[]ch]\(rq.
+.TP
+.BI [^ set ]
+.TQ
+.BI [! set ]
+Matches one character which is \fBnot\fP in the given character
+\fIset\fP.
+Otherwise behaves exactly like \fB[\fIset\fB]\fR.
+.LP
+All other characters match themselves.
+Brackets can be used to escape wildcard characters.
+For instance, \(lq[*]\(rq may be used to match a literal asterisk.
+To facilitate passing filenames verbatim to commands
+accepting glob patterns, there is the \fB^EN\fIq\fR string
+building construct which automatically escapes glob pattern
+wildcards.
+.
 .
 .SH FLOW CONTROL
 .