tos-kamiya / win_wildcard

Expand wildcards in shells of Windows using the dir or the Get-ChildItem command.

win_wildcard

Expand wildcards in shells of Windows using the dir or the Get-ChildItem command.

Sample

See samples/expand_args.py for the source code of the expand_args.py.

Run in PowerShell

Run in cmd.exe

Motivation

Python has a glob module that supports posix-spec wildcards, so it is possible to create scripts with wildcards available. However, for the reasons described below, glob's wildcard is not the same as expected on the Windows command line.

The Windows shell leaves wildcard expansion to the command, so there is no standard way to expand wildcards.

• Wildcards of Get-ChildItem command of PowerShell
• Wildcards of dir command of cmd.exe

Some wildcards of cmd.exe are undocumented.

• Wildcards of Win32API FindFirstFile
• Undocumented Wildcards

There have been reports of user confusion due to wildcard specifications varying from command to command.

• Globbing patterns in windows command prompt/ powershell

I thought it would be appropriate to provide a function that calls the dir command or Get-ChildItem command and uses the result of expanding the wildcard.

Such wildcard expansion would allow the user to run the dir or Get-ChildItem command to see what files are specified before executing the script.