Ant Globs

Apache Ant fileset is documented at the Apache Ant project:

Examples

Ant Globs are like simple file globs (they use ? and * in the same way), but include powerful ways for selecting directories. The examples below use the Ant glob naming, so a leading slash represents the top of the search, not the root of the file system.

*.py
Selects every matching file anywhere in the whole tree
Matches /foo.py and /bar/foo.py but not /foo.pyc or /bar/foo.pyc/
/*.py

Selects every matching file in the root of the directory (but no deeper).

Matches /foo.py but not /bar/foo.py

/myapp/**
Matches all files under /myapp and below.
/myapp/**/__init__.py
Matches all __init__.py files /myapp and below.
dir1/__init__.py

Selects every __init__.py in directory dir1. dir1 directory can be anywhere in the directory tree

Matches /dir1/file.py, /dir3/dir1/file.py and /dir3/dir2/dir1/file.py but not /dir1/another/__init__.py.

**/dir1/__init__.py
Same as above.
/**/dir1/__init__.py
Same as above.
/myapp/**/dir1/__init__.py

Selects every __init__.py in dir1 in the directory tree /myapp under the root.

Matches /myapp/dir1/__init__.py and /myapp/dir2/dir1/__init__.py but not /myapp/file.txt and /dir1/file.txt

Default excludes

Ant FileSet (and Formic) has built-in patterns to screen out a lot of development ‘noise’, such as hidden VCS files and directories. The full list is at get_initial_default_excludes().

Default excludes can be simply switched off on both the command line and the API, for example:

$ formic -i "*.py" -e "__init__.py" "**/*test*/" "test_*" --no-default-excludes