On the portability of wild-pathname

wild-pathname.md

Portability of wild pathname

On most CL implementations, cl:parse-namestring (or #P"...") interprets a unix-like pathname including wildcard (e.g. "/foo/**/bar/qux*.lisp") in a common way. However, there are minor differences in behaviour and facility. Below is a table summarizing the points.

* as one directory

	SBCL	CCL	CLISP	ABCL	ECL	ACL	LW
(pathname-match-p #P"/foo/bar/baz" #P"/foo/*/baz")	T	T	T	T	T	T	T

** as zero or more directories

	SBCL	CCL	CLISP	ABCL	ECL	ACL	LW
(pathname-match-p #P"/foo/bar/baz/qux" #P"/foo/**/qux")	T	T	T	T	T	T	T
(pathname-match-p #P"/foo/qux" #P"/foo/**/qux")	T	T	T	T	T	T	T
(pathname-match-p #P"/foo/bar/baz/qux" #P"**/qux")	NIL	NIL	NIL	NIL	NIL	NIL	NIL

* as a file name or file type

	SBCL	CCL	CLISP	ABCL	ECL	ACL	LW
(pathname-match-p #P"/foo/bar" #P"/foo/*")	T	T	T	T	T	T	T
(pathname-match-p #P"/foo/bar.lisp" #P"/foo/*")	T	T	T	T	NIL	T	T
(pathname-match-p #P"/foo/bar" #P"/foo/*.*")	T	T	T	T	T	T	T
(pathname-name #P"/foo/bar/*")	:WILD	:WILD	:WILD	:WILD	:WILD	:WILD	:WILD
(pathname-type #P"/foo/bar/*")	NIL	NIL	NIL	NIL	NIL	NIL	NIL
(pathname-match-p #P"/foo/bar.lisp" #P"/foo/bar.*")	T	T	T	T	T	T	T
(pathname-match-p #P"/foo/.lisp" #P"/foo/.*")	T	T	T	T	T	T	T
(pathname-name #P"/foo/bar/.*")	#<obj>*	NIL	".*"	".*"	".*"	".*"	""
(pathname-type #P"/foo/bar/.*")	NIL	:WILD	NIL	NIL	NIL	NIL	:WILD

* SBCL provides a class sb-impl::pattern for this purpose, which is here virtually equivalent to ".*".

* as a part of directory name

	SBCL	CCL	CLISP	ABCL	ECL	ACL	LW
(pathname-match-p #P"/foo/bar" #P"/foo*/bar")	T	T	T	T	T	NIL	T
(pathname-match-p #P"/footprint/bar" #P"/foo*/bar")	T	T	T	T	T	T	T

* as a part of file name or file type

	SBCL	CCL	CLISP	ABCL	ECL	ACL	LW
(pathname-match-p #P"/foo/bar.js" #P"/foo/bar*.js")	T	T	T	T	T	T	T
(pathname-match-p #P"/foo/bar.test.js" #P"/foo/bar*.js")	T	T	T	T	T	T	T
(pathname-match-p #P"/foo/bar.js" #P"/foo/bar.*js")	T	T	T	T	T	T	T
(pathname-match-p #P"/foo/bar.mjs" #P"/foo/bar.*js")	T	T	T	T	T	T	T
(pathname-match-p #P"/foo/bar.test.js" #P"/foo/bar.*js")	NIL	NIL	NIL	NIL	NIL	NIL	NIL

wildcard ?

	SBCL	CCL	CLISP	ABCL	ECL	ACL	LW
(pathname-match-p #P"/foo1/baz" #P"/foo?/baz")	T	NIL	T	NIL	T	T	NIL
(pathname-match-p #P"/foo/baz" #P"/foo?/baz")	NIL	NIL	NIL	NIL	T	NIL	NIL
(pathname-match-p #P"/foo100/baz" #P"/foo?/baz")	NIL	NIL	NIL	NIL	NIL	NIL	NIL

The version of each implementation is as follows:

• SBCL: sbcl-1.4.2-win-x64
• Clozure CL: ccl-1.11-f96-win-x64
• CLISP: clisp-2.49-win-x86
• ABCL: abcl-1.5.0-fasl43-win-x64
• ECL: ecl-16.1.2-2cb60658-win-x86
• Allegro CL: acl-10.1-win-x86
• LispWorks: lwpe-6.1.1-win-x86