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Shell wildcards in Raku — *.txt, src/**/*.rakumod, {one,two} — as a matcher for strings and paths and as a way to list a directory, with the shell's grammar rather than a regex to write.

Version

0.9.0 cpan:HANENKAMP

Depends

Test, Test::META

License

Artistic-2.0

Its own test suite

8 files, green

Checked

2026-09-14 against Raku++ 3.28.0 and Rakudo 2026.08

Where it lives

raku.land · source

Install it #

$ rakupp install IO::Glob

zef install IO::Glob writes the same store; either installer leaves the module usable by both engines.

What it is for #

dir gives you every entry in a directory and a grep filters it, which is fine until the filter is *.txt written as a regex — / '.txt' $ / — and someone asks for src/**/*.rakumod. Everyone already knows the shell's wildcards; this distribution parses them into a matcher. A glob object smartmatches a string, filters a list with grep, and walks a directory with .dir, in the shell's own grammar: *, ?, [a-z] classes, and the {one,two} alternatives that bash calls brace expansion.

Matching and listing #

use IO::Glob;

say 'notes.txt' ~~ glob('*.txt');
say 'notes.TXT' ~~ glob('*.txt');
say <a.raku b.rakumod c.txt>.grep(glob('*.raku*'));
say <one two three>.grep(glob('{one,two}'));
say 'src/lib/Foo.rakumod' ~~ glob('src/**/*.rakumod');

my $dir = $*TMPDIR.add("glob-{$*PID}");
$dir.mkdir;
$dir.add($_).spurt('') for <alpha.txt beta.txt gamma.md>;
$dir.add('sub').mkdir;
$dir.add('sub/delta.txt').spurt('');
say glob('*.txt').dir($dir.Str).map(*.basename).sort;
say glob('*').dir($dir.Str).map(*.basename).sort;
say glob('**/*.txt').dir($dir.Str).map({ .relative($dir) }).sort;
.unlink for $dir.add('sub/delta.txt'), $dir.add('alpha.txt'), $dir.add('beta.txt'), $dir.add('gamma.md');
$dir.add('sub').rmdir;
$dir.rmdir;

True
False
(a.raku b.rakumod)
(one two)
True
(alpha.txt beta.txt)
(. .. alpha.txt beta.txt gamma.md sub)
(sub/delta.txt)

glob returns an object; ~~ matches a string against it, grep takes it as a matcher, and .dir lists a directory through it, returning IO::Paths. The grammar defaults to the shell's — :bsd and :simple select the two narrower dialects the module also knows.

The one thing to know #

** means one or more directories, not zero or more. The last listing above finds sub/delta.txt and not alpha.txt, because **/*.txt requires a directory in front of the file — unlike bash with globstar on, where **/ also matches nothing at all. To get both levels, ask twice (glob('*.txt') and glob('**/*.txt')) or match the .dir of a plain recursive walk against glob('*.txt') by basename.

Two smaller shell habits carry over exactly. * matches . and .., as the middle listing shows, so a "delete everything that matches" loop wants a filter. And matching is case-sensitive — *.txt does not find notes.TXT — which is the shell's rule on Linux and a surprise coming from macOS, where the file system would have found it.