wildcard-match
v5.1.4
Published
A tiny and extremely fast library for compiling and matching basic glob patterns
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Wildcard-match takes one or more basic glob patterns, compiles them into a RegExp and returns a function for matching strings with it.
Glob patterns are strings that contain ?
, *
and **
wildcards. When such a pattern is compared with another string, these wildcards can replace one or more symbols. For example, src/*
would match both src/foo
and src/bar
.
This library's goal is to be as small and as fast as possible while supporting only the most basic wildcards. If you need character ranges, extended globs, braces and other advanced features, check out outmatch.
Quickstart
npm install wildcard-match
import wcmatch from 'wildcard-match'
const isMatch = wcmatch('src/**/*.?s')
isMatch('src/components/header/index.js') //=> true
isMatch('src/README.md') //=> false
isMatch.pattern //=> 'src/**/*.?s'
isMatch.options //=> { separator: true }
isMatch.regexp //=> /^src[/\\]+?(?:[^/\\]*?[/\\]+?)*?[^/\\]*?\.[^/\\]s[/\\]*?$/
More details are available in the Installation, Usage and API sections.
Features
For comparison with the alternatives, see the corresponding section.
Installation
The package is distributed via the npm package registry. It can be installed using one of the compatible package managers or included directly from a CDN.
npm
npm install wildcard-match
Yarn
yarn add wildcard-match
pnpm
pnpm install wildcard-match
CDN
When included from a CDN, wildcard-match is available as the global function wcmatch
.
Usage
Basics
Wildcard-match comes built in ESM, CommonJS and UMD formats and includes TypeScript typings. The examples use ESM imports, which can be replaced with the following line for CommonJS: const wcmatch = require('wildcard-match')
.
The default export is a function of two arguments, first of which can be either a single glob string or an array of such patterns. The second argument is optional and can be either an options object or a separator (which will be the value of the separator
option). Wildcard-match compiles them into a regular expression and returns a function (usually called isMatch
in the examples) that tests strings against the pattern. The pattern, options and the compiled RegExp object are available as properties on the returned function:
import wcmatch from 'wildcard-match'
const isMatch = wcmatch('src/?ar')
isMatch('src/bar') //=> true
isMatch('src/car') //=> true
isMatch('src/cvar') //=> false
isMatch.pattern //=> 'src/?ar'
isMatch.options //=> {}
isMatch.regexp //=> /^src[/\\]+?[^/\\]ar[/\\]*?$/
The returned function can be invoked immediately if there is no need to match a pattern more than once:
wcmatch('src/**/*.js')('src/components/body/index.js') //=> true
Compiling a pattern is much slower than comparing a string to it, so it is recommended to always reuse the returned function when possible.
Syntax
Wildcard-match supports the following glob syntax in patterns:
?
matches exactly one arbitrary character excluding separators*
matches zero or more arbitrary characters excluding separators**
matches any number of segments when used as a whole segment in a separated pattern (e.g. /**/ if / is the separator)\
escapes the following character making it be treated literally
More features are available in the outmatch library.
Separators
Globs are most often used to search file paths, which are, essentially, strings split into segments by slashes. While other libraries are usually restricted to this use-case, wildcard-match is able to work with arbitrary strings by accepting a custom separator in the second parameter:
const matchDomain = wcmatch('*.example.com', { separator: '.' })
matchDomain('subdomain.example.com') //=> true
// Here, the second parameter is a shorthand for `{ separator: ',' }`
const matchLike = wcmatch('one,**,f?ur', ',')
matchLike('one,two,three,four') //=> true
The only limitation is that backslashes \
cannot be used as separators in patterns because
wildcard-match uses them for character escaping. However, when separator
is undefined
or true
, /
in patterns will match both /
and \
, so a single pattern with forward
slashes can match both Unix and Windows paths:
const isMatchA = outmatch('foo\\bar') // throws an error
const isMatchB = outmatch('foo/bar') // same as passing `true` as the separator
isMatchB('foo/bar') //=> true
isMatchB('foo\\bar') //=> true
const isMatchC = outmatch('foo/bar', '/')
isMatchC('foo/bar') //=> true
isMatchC('foo\\bar') //=> false
The matching features work with a segment rather than a whole pattern:
const isMatch = wcmatch('foo/b*')
isMatch('foo/bar') //=> true
isMatch('foo/b/ar') //=> false
Segmentation can be turned off completely by passing false
as the separator, which makes wildcard-match treat whole patterns as a single segment. Slashes become regular symbols and *
matches anything:
const isMatch = wcmatch('foo?ba*', false)
isMatch('foo/bar/qux') //=> true
A single separator in a pattern will match one or more separators in a sample string:
wcmatch('foo/bar/baz')('foo/bar///baz') //=> true
When a pattern has an explicit separator at its end, samples also require one or more trailing separators:
const isMatch = wcmatch('foo/bar/')
isMatch('foo/bar') //=> false
isMatch('foo/bar/') //=> true
isMatch('foo/bar///') //=> true
However, if there is no trailing separator in a pattern, strings will match even if they have separators at the end:
const isMatch = wcmatch('foo/bar')
isMatch('foo/bar') //=> true
isMatch('foo/bar/') //=> true
isMatch('foo/bar///') //=> true
Multiple Patterns
Wildcard-match can take an array of glob patterns as the first argument instead of a single pattern. In that case a string will be considered a match if it matches any of the given patterns:
const isMatch = wcmatch(['src/*', 'tests/*'])
isMatch('src/utils.js') //=> true
isMatch('tests/utils.js') //=> true
Matching Arrays of Strings
The returned function can work with arrays of strings when used as the predicate of the native array methods:
const isMatch = wcmatch('src/*.js')
const paths = ['readme.md', 'src/index.js', 'src/components/body.js']
paths.map(isMatch) //=> [ false, true, false ]
paths.filter(isMatch) //=> [ 'src/index.js' ]
paths.some(isMatch) //=> true
paths.every(isMatch) //=> false
paths.find(isMatch) //=> 'src/index.js'
paths.findIndex(isMatch) //=> 1
API
wcmatch(patterns, options?): isMatchwcmatch(patterns, separator?): isMatch
Takes a single pattern string or an array of patterns and compiles them into a regular expression. Returns an isMatch function that takes a sample string as its only argument and returns true if the string matches the pattern(s).
isMatch(sample): boolean
Tests if a sample string matches the patterns that were used to compile the regular expression and create this function.
isMatch.regexp
The compiled regular expression.
isMatch.pattern
The original pattern or array of patterns that was used to compile the regular expression and create the isMatch function.
isMatch.options
The options object that was used to compile the regular expression and create the isMatch function.
Options
| Option | Type | Default Value | Description |
| ----------- | --------------------------- | ------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| separator
| string | boolean | true | Separator to be used to split patterns and samples into segmentstrue
— /
in patterns match both /
and \
in samplesfalse
— don't splitany string — custom separator |
| flags
| string | undefined | Flags to pass to the RegExp. For example, setting this option to 'i'
will make the matching case-insensitive |
Comparison
Node.js v22
Pattern: src/test/**/*.?s
Sample: src/test/foo/bar.js
Compilation
wildcard-match v5.1.4 1,000,947 ops/sec
picomatch v4.0.2 216,903 ops/sec
Matching
wildcard-match v5.1.4 24,330,069 ops/sec
picomatch v4.0.2 7,776,730 ops/sec