Pattern matching

Introduction

String pattern matching is comparing a text string with a pattern. The pattern uses specific notation to specify matching criteria. A wery simple and well known form of pattern matching are MS-DOS wildchars: "?" and "*". The most common usage of pattern matching in computers is matching files for shell commands. Of course MorphOS uses pattern matching in its shell, but it is also used in file requesters. Many applications use pattern matching to filter information presented, for example Snoopium and MediaLogger match names of logged processes against pattern specified by user.

MorphOS uses its own pattern notation, inherited from Amiga OS. While not as powerful as Unix regular expressions, it is easier to read and understand. On the other hand MorphOS pattern matching is more flexible than wildchars. Let's look at some example:

delete "the #? - #?come#?.(mp3|aiff|wav)"

This command will delete all files with "mp3", "aiff" or "wav" extension, starting with "the" as a single word and having "come" string (maybe as a part of word) anywhere after a hyphen surrounded by spaces. While this example may look complicated, it shows the power of MorphOS pattern matching. It will be clean and understandable after reading explanation of MorphOS pattern notation. For now let's state that the whole pattern has been doublequoted only because it has spaces inside.