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# Explaining Globs

A glob is a string of literal and/or wildcard characters used to match filepaths. Globbing is the act of locating files on a filesystem using one or more globs.

The `src()` method expects a single glob string or an array of globs to determine which files your pipeline will operate on. At least one match must be found for your glob(s) otherwise `src()` will error. When an array of globs is used, they are matched in array order - especially useful for negative globs.

## Segments and separators

A segment is everything between separators. The separator in a glob is always the `/` character - regardless of the operating system - even in Windows where the path separator is `\\`. In a glob, `\\` is reserved as the escape character.

Here, the * is escaped, so it is treated as a literal instead of a wildcard character.

```js

'glob_with_uncommon_\\*_character.js'

```

Avoid using Node's `path` methods, like `path.join`, to create globs. On Windows, it produces an invalid glob because Node uses `\\` as the separator. Also avoid the `__dirname` global, `__filename` global, or `process.cwd()` for the same reasons.

```js

const invalidGlob = path.join(__dirname, 'src/*.js');

```

## Special character: * (single-star)

Matches any amount - including none - of characters within a single segment. Useful for globbing files within one directory.

This glob will match files like `index.js`, but not files like `scripts/index.js` or `scripts/nested/index.js`

```js

'*.js'

```

## Special character: ** (double-star)

Matches any amount - including none - of characters across segments. Useful for globbing files in nested directories. Make sure to appropriately restrict your double-star globs, to avoid matching large directories unnecessarily.

Here, the glob is appropriately restricted to the `scripts/` directory. It will match files like `scripts/index.js`, `scripts/nested/index.js`, and `scripts/nested/twice/index.js`.

```js

'scripts/**/*.js'

```

<small>In the previous example, if `scripts/` wasn't prefixed, all dependencies in `node_modules` or other directories would also be matched.</small>

## Special character: ! (negative)

Since globs are matched in array order, a negative glob must follow at least one non-negative glob in an array. The first finds a set of matches, then the negative glob removes a portion of those results. These are most performant when they only include literal characters.

```js

['script/**/*.js', '!scripts/vendor/']

```

If any non-negative globs follow a negative, nothing will be removed from the later set of matches.

```js

['script/**/*.js', '!scripts/vendor/', 'scripts/vendor/react.js']

```

Negative globs can be used as an alternative for restricting double-star globs.

```js

['**/*.js', '!node_modules/']

```

<small>In the previous example, if the negative glob was `!node_modules/**/*.js`, every match would have to be compared against the negative glob, which would be extremely slow.</small>

## Overlapping globs

Two or more globs that (un)intentionally match the same file are considered overlapping. When overlapping globs are used within a single `src()`, gulp does its best to remove the duplicates, but doesn't attempt to deduplicate across separate `src()` calls.

## Advanced resources

Most of what you'll need to work with globs in gulp is covered here. If you'd like to get more in depth, here are a few resources.

* [Micromatch Documentation][micromatch-docs]

* [node-glob's Glob Primer][glob-primer-docs]

* [Begin's Globbing Documentation][begin-globbing-docs]

* [Wikipedia's Glob Page][wikipedia-glob]

[micromatch-docs]: https://github.com/micromatch/micromatch

[glob-primer-docs]: https://github.com/isaacs/node-glob#glob-primer

[begin-globbing-docs]: https://github.com/begin/globbing#what-is-globbing

[wikipedia-glob]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glob_(programming)