CURLOPT_WILDCARDMATCH

Section: curl_easy_setopt options (3)
Updated: November 04, 2020
Page Index

NAME

CURLOPT_WILDCARDMATCH - enable directory wildcard transfers

SYNOPSIS

CURLcode curl_easy_setopt(CURL *handle, CURLOPT_WILDCARDMATCH, long onoff);

DESCRIPTION

Set onoff to 1 if you want to transfer multiple files according to a file name pattern. The pattern can be specified as part of the CURLOPT_URL(3) option, using an fnmatch-like pattern (Shell Pattern Matching) in the last part of URL (file name).

By default, libcurl uses its internal wildcard matching implementation. You can provide your own matching function by the CURLOPT_FNMATCH_FUNCTION(3) option.

A brief introduction of its syntax follows:

* - ASTERISK: ftp://example.com/some/path/*.txt (for all txt's from the root directory). Only two asterisks are allowed within the same pattern string.

? - QUESTION MARK: Question mark matches any (exactly one) character.
ftp://example.com/some/path/photo?.jpeg

[ - BRACKET EXPRESSION

The left bracket opens a bracket expression. The question mark and asterisk have no special meaning in a bracket expression. Each bracket expression ends by the right bracket and matches exactly one character. Some examples follow:

[a-zA-Z0-9] or [f-gF-G] - character interval

[abc] - character enumeration

[^abc] or [!abc] - negation

[[:name:]] class expression. Supported classes are alnum,lower, space, alpha, digit, print, upper, blank, graph, xdigit.

[][-!^] - special case - matches only '-', ']', '[', '!' or '^'. These characters have no special purpose.

[\[\]\\] - escape syntax. Matches '[', ']' or '\'.

Using the rules above, a file name pattern can be constructed:

ftp://example.com/some/path/[a-z[:upper:]\\].jpeg

PROTOCOLS

This feature is only supported for FTP download.

EXAMPLE

See https://curl.se/libcurl/c/ftp-wildcard.html

AVAILABILITY

Added in 7.21.0

RETURN VALUE

Returns CURLE_OK if the option is supported, and CURLE_UNKNOWN_OPTION if not.