(71B) Wildcard pattern matching, directory listing

[robve]

(04-16-2021 02:49 PM)Dave Britten Wrote:  The algorithm is relatively simple. It compares the input string to the pattern one character at a time. A ? in the pattern is automatically considered a match against the current character. If * is encountered, it moves the pointer in the pattern to the next character, and starts recursively calling the matching function (FNM), incrementing the pointer to the input string one character at a time until it either finds a match or gives up.

Recursion is not needed and can result in exponential blow-up of the matching time. For details see my Code Project post why blow-up happens and how to optimize to match * and ? wildcards and [a-z] ranges efficiently. Hope this helps!

- Rob