question about intended function of filelib:wildcard/2

[Vlad Dumitrescu]

>  filelib:wildcard("/home/eleberg/*").
>  filelib:wildcard("*", "/home/eleberg").
> on my system they return very different lists.
>
> could somebody please explain if they should be different, and how 
> wildcard/2 is supposed to be used.

Hi,

Looking at the code,
    wildcard(Pattern) ->
        {ok, Cwd} = file:get_cwd(),
        wildcard(Pattern, Cwd).

    wildcard({compiled_wildcard, [Base|Rest]}, _Cwd) ->
        wildcard1([Base], Rest);
    wildcard(Pattern, Cwd) when list(Pattern), list(Cwd) ->
        wildcard(compile_wildcard(Pattern), Cwd).

it's interesting to notice that the Cwd argument is not used at all.

I would suppose that the intention was that if Base was a relative path, it 
should be appended to Cwd. If Base is absolute, then Cwd should be ignored, 
of course.

Using for example
    wildcard({compiled_wildcard, [Base|Rest]}, Cwd) ->
        case filename:pathtype(Base) of
             relative ->
                 wildcard1([join(Base, Cwd)], Rest);
            _ ->
                 wildcard1([Base], Rest)
        end;
works, with the only drawback that the returned filenames are all absolute 
(which might or might not be what one needs).

regards,
Vlad