[ZOOKEEPER-2077] Wild-card/Regex Support for Zookeeper client commands

• Type: New Feature
• Status: Open
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Unresolved
• Component/s: java client
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Vivek Madani
• Created: 12/Nov/14 08:44
• Updated: 17/Nov/15 06:14

Description

We had an use-case where we had to list nodes matching a particular pattern from a given path. While looking at the ZK client commands, it seems that it does not support wildcard/regex.

I did try to overcome this by making some basic changes to the LSCommand.java and adding a "-m" switch which accepts regex. Since I implemented this using java.util.regex, it supports everything that Java regex supports.

I was thinking such functionality can be useful for 'ls' as well as 'delete' (and deleteall). Though I implemented this at the client code for ls - this can be done at the server side code as well and I have a preliminary plan on top of my head to do this for ls, delete, deleteall.

Will it be worthwhile addition to make to zookeeper client? If so, I can work on submitting a patch.

Points to consider in case such a support can be implemented:
1. Do we support Java regex or Unix Shell wildcards ( * )?
2. Right now, create allows creating nodes with characters like * - we need to make sure that such a change does not break or create confusion (Unix too allows creating a directory with * BTW).

Any thoughts on whether this will be a worthwhile addition to Zookeeper client?