Search Result for "glob": 
Wordnet 3.0

NOUN (1)

1. a compact mass;
- Example: "a ball of mud caught him on the shoulder"
[syn: ball, clod, glob, lump, clump, chunk]


The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:

glob \glob\ n. 1. a compact mass, especially of a semiliquid or viscous substance; as, a glob of glue fell on my shoe. Syn: ball, clod, lump, clump, chunk. [WordNet 1.5 +PJC]
WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006):

glob n 1: a compact mass; "a ball of mud caught him on the shoulder" [syn: ball, clod, glob, lump, clump, chunk]
The Jargon File (version 4.4.7, 29 Dec 2003):

glob /glob/, not, /glohb/, v.,n. [Unix; common] To expand special characters in a wildcarded name, or the act of so doing (the action is also called globbing). The Unix conventions for filename wildcarding have become sufficiently pervasive that many hackers use some of them in written English, especially in email or news on technical topics. Those commonly encountered include the following: +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |* |wildcard for any string (see also UN*X) | |--+----------------------------------------------------------------------| |? |wildcard for any single character (generally read this way only at the| | |beginning or in the middle of a word) | |--+----------------------------------------------------------------------| |[]|delimits a wildcard matching any of the enclosed characters | |--+----------------------------------------------------------------------| ||alternation of comma-separated alternatives; thus, ?foobaz,qux? | | |would be read as ?foobaz? or ?fooqux? | +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Some examples: ?He said his name was [KC]arl? (expresses ambiguity). ?I don't read talk.politics.*? (any of the talk.politics subgroups on Usenet ). Other examples are given under the entry for X. Note that glob patterns are similar, but not identical, to those used in regexps. Historical note: The jargon usage derives from glob, the name of a subprogram that expanded wildcards in archaic pre-Bourne versions of the Unix shell.
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (30 December 2018):

glob /glob/ A mechanism that returns a list of pathnames that match a pattern containing wild card characters. Globbing was available in early versions of Unix and, in more limited form, in Microsoft Windows. The characters are: * = zero or more characters, e.g. "probab*" would match probabilistic, probabilistically, probabilities, probability, probable, probably. ? = any single character, e.g. "b?g" would match bag, big, bog, bug. [] any of the enclosed characters, e.g. "b[ao]g" would match bag, bog (not on Windows). These have become sufficiently pervasive that hackers use them in written messages. E.g. "He said his name was [KC]arl" (expresses ambiguity). "I don't read talk.politics.*" (any of the talk.politics subgroups on Usenet). Other examples are given under the entry for X. Later Unix shells introduced the x,y,z syntax which expands to a comma-separated list of alternatives, thus foobaz,qux would expand to "foobaz" and "fooqux". This differs from a glob because it generates a list of all possible expansions, rather than matching against existing files. Glob patterns are similar, but not identical, to regular expressions. "glob" was a subprogram that expanded wild cards in archaic pre-Bourne versions of the Unix shell. It is also a bulit-in function in Perl. (2014-08-22)