How to find files that match a wildcard string in Java?
file, java, wildcard
Solution
Consider DirectoryScanner from Apache Ant:
DirectoryScanner scanner = new DirectoryScanner();
scanner.setIncludes(new String[]{"**/*.java"});
scanner.setBasedir("C:/Temp");
scanner.setCaseSensitive(false);
scanner.scan();
String[] files = scanner.getIncludedFiles();
You'll need to reference ant.jar (~ 1.3 MB for ant 1.7.1).
Problem
This should be really simple. If I have a String like this: ``` ../Test?/sample*.txt ``` then what is a generally-accepted way to get a list of files that match this pattern? (e.g. it should match `../Test1/sample22b.txt` and `../Test4/sample-spiffy.txt` but not `../Test3/sample2.blah` or `../Test44/sample2.txt`) I've taken a look at `org.apache.commons.io.filefilter.WildcardFileFilter` and it seems like the right beast but I'm not sure how to use it for finding files in a relative directory path. I suppose I can look the source for ant since it uses wildcard syntax, but I must be missing something pretty obvious here. (edit: the above example was just a sample case. I'm looking for the way to parse general paths containing wildcards at runtime. I figured out how to do it based on mmyers' suggestion but it's kind of annoying. Not to mention that the java JRE seems to auto-parse simple wildcards in the main(String[] arguments) from a single argument to "save" me time and hassle... I'm just glad I didn't have non-file arguments in the mix.)