Path Expressions

Path expressions are used to restrict access grants in code owner config files to only apply to a subset of files in a directory (e.g. see per-file rule for the find-owners backend).

Which syntax is used depends on the used code owner backend:

find-owners backend: uses globs, but each glob is automatically prefixed with {**/,} so that subfolders are always matched (e.g. *.md matches all md files in all subfolders, rather then only md files in the current folder)
proto backend: uses simple path expressions

Globs

Globs support the following wildcards:

*: matches any string that does not include slashes
**: matches any string, including slashes
?: matches any character
[abc]: matches one character given in the bracket
[a-c]: matches one character from the range given in the bracket
{html,htm}: matches either of the 2 expressions, html or htm

See below for examples.

Simple path expressions

Simple path expressions use the following wildcards:

*: matches any string that does not include slashes
...: matches any string, including slashes

See below for examples.

Examples

To Match	Glob	find-owners	Simple Path Expression
Concrete file in current folder	`BUILD`	not possible (1)	`BUILD`
File type in current folder	`*.md`	not possible (1)	`*.md`
Concrete file in the current folder and in all subfolders	`{**/,}BUILD`	`BUILD`	needs 2 expressions: `BUILD` + `.../BUILD`
File type in the current folder and in all subfolders	`**.md`	`.md` or `*.md`	`....md`
All files in a subfolder	`my-folder/**`	not possible (1), but you can add a `my-folder/OWNERS` file instead of using a glob	`my-folder/...`
All “foo-<1-digit-number>.txt” files in all subfolders	`{**/,}foo-[0-9].txt`	`foo-[0-9].txt`	not possible
All “foo-.txt” files in all subfolders	not possible	not possible	not possible

(1): To be compatible with the find-owners plugin find-owners path expressions are prefixes with {**/,} which matches any folder (see above). This means if path expressions like BUILD, *.md or my-folder/** are used in OWNERS files the effective path expression are {**/,}BUILD, {**/,}*.md and {**/,}my-folder/**. These path expression do not only match BUILD, *.md and my-folder/** directly in the folder that contains the OWNERS file but also BUILD, *.md and my-folder/** in any subfolder (e.g. foo/bar/BUILD, foo/bar/baz.md and foo/bar/my-folder/).

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