bsd_glob behaving differently on different machines - regex

Question

I am using bsd_glob to get a list of files matching a regular expression for file path. My perl utility is working on RHEL, but not on Suse 11/AIX/Solarix, for the exact same set of files and the same regular expression. I googled for any limitations of bsd_glob, but couldn't find much information. Can someone point what's wrong?
Below is the regular expression for the file path I am searching for:
/datafiles/data_one/level_one/*/DATA*
I need all files beginning with DATA, in any directory present under 'level_one'.
This works perfectly on my RHEL box, but not on any other Unix and Suse Linux.
Below is the code snipped where I am using bsd_glob
foreach my $file (bsd_glob ( "$fileName", GLOB_ERR )) {
if ($fileName =~ /[[:alnum:]]\*\/\*$/) {
next if -d $file;
$fileList{$file} = $permissions;
$total++;
}
elsif ($fileName =~ /[[:alnum:]]\*$/) {
$fileList{$file} = $permissions;
$total++;
}
else {
$fileList{$file} = $permissions;
$total++;
}
}
In this case where I am facing the issue, /datafiles/data_one/level_one/*/DATA* is being passed to bsd_glob. I am creating a map ($fileList) of files that are returned by bsd_glob based on the regular expression I am passing to it. $permissions is a predefined value.
Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

The problem here looks to be that you're confusing glob patterns and regular expressions.
/[[:alnum:]]\*\/\*$/
/[[:alnum:]]\*$/
You're looking for a file called * with that, under a directory containing a literal *.
Whilst that is technically possible it's really very strange. And simply cannot ever match the patterns your glob should find.
Do you perhaps mean:
m,\w+.*/.*$,
(different delimiter for clarity)
Also - why are you using bsd_glob specifically? From File::Glob:
Since v5.6.0, Perl's CORE::glob() is implemented in terms of bsd_glob(). Note that they don't share the same prototype--CORE::glob() only accepts a single argument. Due to historical reasons, CORE::glob() will also split its argument on whitespace, treating it as multiple patterns, whereas bsd_glob() considers them as one pattern. But see :bsd_glob under EXPORTS, below.
Comment:
I used bsd_glob instead of glob as there was slight difference in the way it works on different UNIX platforms. Specifically, for the above mentioned pattern, on some UNIX platforms, it didn't return a file having exact name 'DATA', and only returned files with something appended to DATA.
I'm a little surprised at that, as they should be implementing the same mechanisms and the same POSIX standard on globbing. Is there any chance there's a permissions related problem instead?
But otherwise you could perhaps try not using glob to do the heavy lifting, and instead just compare the file name to a bunch of regular expressions. (Although note - REs have very different syntax)
foreach my $file ( glob('/datafiles/data_one/level_one/*/*') ) {
next unless $filename =~ m,DATA\w+$,;
}