Working with Globs

Certain configuration values in Forestry, such as the sidebar match and exclude parameters, accept what is known as a glob. A glob is a string of characters that follows a special syntax, used to match paths in a file tree.

Basic Syntax

• ? matches a single character
• * matches any number of characters.
• [abc] matches any one character in the given set
• [a-z] matches a range.
• {foo,bar} matches any whole word in the given set

Globstar

Two asterisks in sequence (**) is known as a globstar and will match 0 or more subdirectories in the path.

For example, the pattern /content/**/index.md matches all of the following:

• /content/index.md
• /content/posts/index.md
• /content/authors/index.md
• /content/products/clothing/index.md

Practical Examples

The following are examples of some patterns you might use in your sidebar configuration’s match or exclude field.

Pattern	Matches
/data/*.json	All JSON files in the data directory
/data/**/*.json	All JSON files in the data directory and any subdirectories
**/*.{yaml,yml,json,toml}	All JSON, YAML, or TOML files in the entire project
{/foo.json, /data/bar.toml}	Only /foo.json and /data/bar.toml

Further Reading

• Wikipedia: Glob

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