[HDFS-2461] Support HDFS file name globbing in libhdfs

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Open
• Priority: Minor
• Resolution: Unresolved
• Component/s: libhdfs
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Mariappan Asokan
• Created: 17/Oct/11 21:30
• Updated: 12/Jul/13 22:48

Description

This is to enhance the C API in libhdfs to support HDFS file name globbing. The proposal is to keep the new API simple and return a list of matched HDFS path names. Callers can use existing hdfsGetPathInfo() to get additional information on each of the matched path. Following code snippet shows the proposed API enhancements:

hdfs.h

/**
 * hdfsGlob - Get all the HDFS file names that match a glob pattern.  The
 * returned result will be sorted by the file names.  The last element in the
 * array is NULL.  The function hdfsFreeGlob() should be called to free this
 * array and its contents.
 * @param fs The configured filesystem handle.
 * @param globPattern The glob pattern to match file names against.  Note that
 * this is not a POSIX regular expression but rather a POSIX glob pattern.
 * @return Returns a dynamically-allocated array of strings; if there is no
 * match, an array with one entry that has a NULL value will be returned.  If
 * there is an error, NULL will be returned.
 */
char ** hdfsGlob(hdfsFS fs, const char *globPattern);

/**
 * hdfsFreeGlob - Free up the array returned by hdfsGlob().
 * @param globResult The array of dynamically-allocated strings returned by
 * hdfsGlob().
 */
void hdfsFreeGlob(char **globResult);

Please comment on the above proposed API. I will start the implementation and testing. However, I need a committer to work with.

Thanks.