DESCRIPTION

The function wordexp() performs a shell-like expansion of the string s and returns the result in the structure pointed to by p. The data type wordexp_t is a structure that at least has the fields we_wordc, we_wordv, and we_offs. The field we_wordc is a size_t that gives the number of words in the expansion of s. The field we_wordv is a char ** that points to the array of words found. The field we_offs of type size_t is sometimes (depending on flags, see below) used to indicate the number of initial elements in the we_wordv array that should be filled with NULLs.

The function wordfree() frees the allocated memory again. More precisely, it does not free its argument, but it frees the array we_wordv and the strings that points to.

RETURN VALUE

In case of success 0 is returned. In case of error one of the following five values is returned.

VERSIONS

wordexp() and wordfree() are provided in glibc since version 2.1.

ATTRIBUTES

For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see attributes(7).

In the above table, utent in race:utent signifies that if any of the functions setutent(3), getutent(3), or endutent(3) are used in parallel in different threads of a program, then data races could occur. wordexp() calls those functions, so we use race:utent to remind users.

CONFORMING TO

POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008.

EXAMPLE

The output of the following example program is approximately that of ls [a-c]*.c.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <wordexp.h>

int
main(int argc, char **argv)
{
    wordexp_t p;
    char **w;
    int i;

    wordexp([a−c]*.c, &p, 0);
    w = p.we_wordv;
    for (i = 0; i < p.we_wordc; i++)
        printf(%s
, w[i]);
    wordfree(&p);
    exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}

SEE ALSO

fnmatch(3), glob(3)