the.com/glob
A pattern that matches filenames by pretending * means anything and * always wins.
means A small formless lump or blob of a soft or liquid substance.
from Likely a blend or back-formation from 'blob' and 'lump' (or 'globe'), emerging in English as an echo of their round, soft heaviness — nobody wrote down the exact moment, but the word sounds like what it describes, which is probably no accident. In computing, 'glob' was later shortened from 'global' as in the Unix 'glob()' function, named for matching filenames 'globally' with wildcards — a case of one word's two lives, one squishy, one logical.
- name origin
- short for global, from 1970s Unix shell
- not regex
- simpler syntax, no capture groups or lookaheads
- common symbols
- asterisk, question mark, square brackets
- everywhere
- powers gitignore, bash, and build tools