Pattern matching
Pattern matching is a powerful feature that enables more efficient operations.
When most people think of pattern matching, they think of using wilcards, but pattern matching is actually much more. It's a powerful feature that enables more efficient operations, especially on systems like the Amiga that have a hierarchical file system with few size limits.
Pattern matching is part of the appeal of the Shell. It would be difficult to use icons to perform an operation on 50 files at once - not to mention the problem of fitting all the icons on a 12-inch monitor. Some complex operations are just easier to do with a text interface.
Standard Available Tokens
| ? | Matches a single character. For instance a? matches any string with two characters that starts with the letter a. |
| # | Matches a subsequent expression 0 or more times. For instance, the pattern #? will match any string. |
| (ab|cd) | Matches any one of the items separated by |. |
| ~ | Negates the following expression. For instance the pattern ~x? will match any two letter string except those starting with x. Another corollary of this is the pattern ~(x?) which will match anything except two-letter strings beginning with x; ie. xaa or ab but not xa. |
| [abc] | Character class; matches any one of the characters in the brackets. |
| [a-z] | Character range (must be within character classes). You can also use [a-e,x-z] style. |
| % | Matches 0 characters always. For example, the pattern (foo|whiskey|%)bar matches foobar, whiskeybar and bar. |
| * | Synonym for #?. Not available by default on Release 2, but it is an option that can be turned on. |
Expression in this table means either a single token or character token (such as ? or x), or an alternation (such as (ab|cd|ef)), or a character class (such as [a-z,A-Z]).
The Amiga's Wildcard
On the Amiga, the wilcard is #? - as opposed to * on other platforms. For example, the command
delete #?.info
would delete all the files in the current directory that end in .info.
Within Applications
In addition to its usefulness on the filing system, pattern matching is also useful within applications. For example, the Find function within a text editor should be able to find strings according to a pattern.
Your application should support pattern matching from the Shell and from functions within the application itself, through AmigaDOS system routines.