How do I use directory globbing in JDK7

Question

I have been trying to use the new globbing feature in JDK7, starting from the documentation and examples

I can get globs such as \"glob:*.dat\" to work

Answer 1

You need to start your glob with **

matcher = FileSystems.getDefault().getPathMatcher("glob:**/foo/**/bar/*.dat");

Otherwise, calling

matcher.matches(file)

attempts to match the full path to the file against a regular expression that starts with the relative path (/foo/), rather than with the absolute path (d:/petermr-workspace/.../foo).

Prepending the ** to the glob just tells it to ignore the beginning of the absolute path.

Answer 2

Here's a working example which displays all the zip files in any descendant directory of d:/:

public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
    final PathMatcher matcher = FileSystems.getDefault().getPathMatcher("glob:d:/**/*.zip");
    Files.walkFileTree(Paths.get("d:/"), new SimpleFileVisitor<Path>() {
        @Override
        public FileVisitResult visitFile(Path file, BasicFileAttributes attrs) throws IOException {
            if (matcher.matches(file)) {
                System.out.println(file);
            }
            return FileVisitResult.CONTINUE;
        }

        @Override
        public FileVisitResult visitFileFailed(Path file, IOException exc) throws IOException {
            return FileVisitResult.CONTINUE;
        }
    });
}

As you see, using forward slashes works on Windows.