Bash-like brace expansion, implemented in JavaScript. Safer than other brace expansion libs, with complete support for the Bash 4.3 braces specification, without sacrificing speed.
Please consider following this project's author, Jon Schlinkert, and consider starring the project to show your โค๏ธ and support.
Install with npm:
$ npm install --save bracesSee the changelog for details.
Brace patterns make globs more powerful by adding the ability to match specific ranges and sequences of characters.
- Accurate - complete support for the Bash 4.3 Brace Expansion specification (passes all of the Bash braces tests)
- fast and performant - Starts fast, runs fast and scales well as patterns increase in complexity.
- Organized code base - The parser and compiler are easy to maintain and update when edge cases crop up.
- Well-tested - Thousands of test assertions, and passes all of the Bash, minimatch, and brace-expansion unit tests (as of the date this was written).
- Safer - You shouldn't have to worry about users defining aggressive or malicious brace patterns that can break your application. Braces takes measures to prevent malicious regex that can be used for DDoS attacks (see catastrophic backtracking).
- Supports lists - (aka "sets")
a/{b,c}/d=>['a/b/d', 'a/c/d'] - Supports sequences - (aka "ranges")
{01..03}=>['01', '02', '03'] - Supports steps - (aka "increments")
{2..10..2}=>['2', '4', '6', '8', '10'] - Supports escaping - To prevent evaluation of special characters.
The main export is a function that takes one or more brace patterns and options.
const braces = require('braces');
// braces(patterns[, options]);
console.log(braces(['{01..05}', '{a..e}']));
//=> ['(0[1-5])', '([a-e])']
console.log(braces(['{01..05}', '{a..e}'], { expand: true }));
//=> ['01', '02', '03', '04', '05', 'a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e']By default, brace patterns are compiled into strings that are optimized for creating regular expressions and matching.
Compiled
console.log(braces('a/{x,y,z}/b'));
//=> ['a/(x|y|z)/b']
console.log(braces(['a/{01..20}/b', 'a/{1..5}/b']));
//=> [ 'a/(0[1-9]|1[0-9]|20)/b', 'a/([1-5])/b' ]Expanded
Enable brace expansion by setting the expand option to true, or by using braces.expand() (returns an array similar to what you'd expect from Bash, or echo {1..5}, or minimatch):
console.log(braces('a/{x,y,z}/b', { expand: true }));
//=> ['a/x/b', 'a/y/b', 'a/z/b']
console.log(braces.expand('{01..10}'));
//=> ['01','02','03','04','05','06','07','08','09','10']Expand lists (like Bash "sets"):
console.log(braces('a/{foo,bar,baz}/*.js'));
//=> ['a/(foo|bar|baz)/*.js']
console.log(braces.expand('a/{foo,bar,baz}/*.js'));
//=> ['a/foo/*.js', 'a/bar/*.js', 'a/baz/*.js']Expand ranges of characters (like Bash "sequences"):
console.log(braces.expand('{1..3}')); // ['1', '2', '3']
console.log(braces.expand('a/{1..3}/b')); // ['a/1/b', 'a/2/b', 'a/3/b']
console.log(braces('{a..c}', { expand: true })); // ['a', 'b', 'c']
console.log(braces('foo/{a..c}', { expand: true })); // ['foo/a', 'foo/b', 'foo/c']
// supports zero-padded ranges
console.log(braces('a/{01..03}/b')); //=> ['a/(0[1-3])/b']
console.log(braces('a/{001..300}/b')); //=> ['a/(0{2}[1-9]|0[1-9][0-9]|[12][0-9]{2}|300)/b']See fill-range for all available range-expansion options.
Steps, or increments, may be used with ranges:
console.log(braces.expand('{2..10..2}'));
//=> ['2', '4', '6', '8', '10']
console.log(braces('{2..10..2}'));
//=> ['(2|4|6|8|10)']When the .optimize method is used, or options.optimize is set to true, sequences are passed to to-regex-range for expansion.
Brace patterns may be nested. The results of each expanded string are not sorted, and left to right order is preserved.
"Expanded" braces
console.log(braces.expand('a{b,c,/{x,y}}/e'));
//=> ['ab/e', 'ac/e', 'a/x/e', 'a/y/e']
console.log(braces.expand('a/{x,{1..5},y}/c'));
//=> ['a/x/c', 'a/1/c', 'a/2/c', 'a/3/c', 'a/4/c', 'a/5/c', 'a/y/c']"Optimized" braces
console.log(braces('a{b,c,/{x,y}}/e'));
//=> ['a(b|c|/(x|y))/e']
console.log(braces('a/{x,{1..5},y}/c'));
//=> ['a/(x|([1-5])|y)/c']Escaping braces
A brace pattern will not be expanded or evaluted if either the opening or closing brace is escaped:
console.log(braces.expand('a\\{d,c,b}e'));
//=> ['a{d,c,b}e']
console.log(braces.expand('a{d,c,b\\}e'));
//=> ['a{d,c,b}e']Escaping commas
Commas inside braces may also be escaped:
console.log(braces.expand('a{b\\,c}d'));
//=> ['a{b,c}d']
console.log(braces.expand('a{d\\,c,b}e'));
//=> ['ad,ce', 'abe']Single items
Following bash conventions, a brace pattern is also not expanded when it contains a single character:
console.log(braces.expand('a{b}c'));
//=> ['a{b}c']Type: Number
Default: 65,536
Description: Limit the length of the input string. Useful when the input string is generated or your application allows users to pass a string, et cetera.
console.log(braces('a/{b,c}/d', { maxLength: 3 })); //=> throws an errorType: Boolean
Default: undefined
Description: Generate an "expanded" brace pattern (alternatively you can use the braces.expand() method, which does the same thing).
console.log(braces('a/{b,c}/d', { expand: true }));
//=> [ 'a/b/d', 'a/c/d' ]Type: Boolean
Default: undefined
Description: Remove duplicates from the returned array.
Type: Number
Default: 1000
Description: To prevent malicious patterns from being passed by users, an error is thrown when braces.expand() is used or options.expand is true and the generated range will exceed the rangeLimit.
You can customize options.rangeLimit or set it to Inifinity to disable this altogether.
Examples
// pattern exceeds the "rangeLimit", so it's optimized automatically
console.log(braces.expand('{1..1000}'));
//=> ['([1-9]|[1-9][0-9]{1,2}|1000)']
// pattern does not exceed "rangeLimit", so it's NOT optimized
console.log(braces.expand('{1..100}'));
//=> ['1', '2', '3', '4', '5', '6', '7', '8', '9', '10', '11', '12', '13', '14', '15', '16', '17', '18', '19', '20', '21', '22', '23', '24', '25', '26', '27', '28', '29', '30', '31', '32', '33', '34', '35', '36', '37', '38', '39', '40', '41', '42', '43', '44', '45', '46', '47', '48', '49', '50', '51', '52', '53', '54', '55', '56', '57', '58', '59', '60', '61', '62', '63', '64', '65', '66', '67', '68', '69', '70', '71', '72', '73', '74', '75', '76', '77', '78', '79', '80', '81', '82', '83', '84', '85', '86', '87', '88', '89', '90', '91', '92', '93', '94', '95', '96', '97', '98', '99', '100']Type: Function
Default: undefined
Description: Customize range expansion.
Example: Transforming non-numeric values
const alpha = braces.expand('x/{a..e}/y', {
transform(value, index) {
// When non-numeric values are passed, "value" is a character code.
return 'foo/' + String.fromCharCode(value) + '-' + index;
}
});
console.log(alpha);
//=> [ 'x/foo/a-0/y', 'x/foo/b-1/y', 'x/foo/c-2/y', 'x/foo/d-3/y', 'x/foo/e-4/y' ]Example: Transforming numeric values
const numeric = braces.expand('{1..5}', {
transform(value) {
// when numeric values are passed, "value" is a number
return 'foo/' + value * 2;
}
});
console.log(numeric);
//=> [ 'foo/2', 'foo/4', 'foo/6', 'foo/8', 'foo/10' ]Type: Boolean
Default: undefined
Description: In regular expressions, quanitifiers can be used to specify how many times a token can be repeated. For example, a{1,3} will match the letter a one to three times.
Unfortunately, regex quantifiers happen to share the same syntax as Bash lists
The quantifiers option tells braces to detect when regex quantifiers are defined in the given pattern, and not to try to expand them as lists.
Examples
const braces = require('braces');
console.log(braces('a/b{1,3}/{x,y,z}'));
//=> [ 'a/b(1|3)/(x|y|z)' ]
console.log(braces('a/b{1,3}/{x,y,z}', {quantifiers: true}));
//=> [ 'a/b{1,3}/(x|y|z)' ]
console.log(braces('a/b{1,3}/{x,y,z}', {quantifiers: true, expand: true}));
//=> [ 'a/b{1,3}/x', 'a/b{1,3}/y', 'a/b{1,3}/z' ]Type: Boolean
Default: undefined
Description: Do not strip backslashes that were used for escaping from the result.
Brace expansion is a type of parameter expansion that was made popular by unix shells for generating lists of strings, as well as regex-like matching when used alongside wildcards (globs).
In addition to "expansion", braces are also used for matching. In other words:
- brace expansion is for generating new lists
- brace matching is for filtering existing lists
More about brace expansion (click to expand)
There are two main types of brace expansion:
- lists: which are defined using comma-separated values inside curly braces:
{a,b,c} - sequences: which are defined using a starting value and an ending value, separated by two dots:
a{1..3}b. Optionally, a third argument may be passed to define a "step" or increment to use:a{1..100..10}b. These are also sometimes referred to as "ranges".
Here are some example brace patterns to illustrate how they work:
Sets
{a,b,c} => a b c
{a,b,c}{1,2} => a1 a2 b1 b2 c1 c2
Sequences
{1..9} => 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
{4..-4} => 4 3 2 1 0 -1 -2 -3 -4
{1..20..3} => 1 4 7 10 13 16 19
{a..j} => a b c d e f g h i j
{j..a} => j i h g f e d c b a
{a..z..3} => a d g j m p s v y
Combination
Sets and sequences can be mixed together or used along with any other strings.
{a,b,c}{1..3} => a1 a2 a3 b1 b2 b3 c1 c2 c3
foo/{a,b,c}/bar => foo/a/bar foo/b/bar foo/c/bar
The fact that braces can be "expanded" from relatively simple patterns makes them ideal for quickly generating test fixtures, file paths, and similar use cases.
In addition to expansion, brace patterns are also useful for performing regular-expression-like matching.
For example, the pattern foo/{1..3}/bar would match any of following strings:
foo/1/bar
foo/2/bar
foo/3/bar
But not:
baz/1/qux
baz/2/qux
baz/3/qux
Braces can also be combined with glob patterns to perform more advanced wildcard matching. For example, the pattern */{1..3}/* would match any of following strings:
foo/1/bar
foo/2/bar
foo/3/bar
baz/1/qux
baz/2/qux
baz/3/qux
Although brace patterns offer a user-friendly way of matching ranges or sets of strings, there are also some major disadvantages and potential risks you should be aware of.
"brace bombs"
- brace expansion can eat up a huge amount of processing resources
- as brace patterns increase linearly in size, the system resources required to expand the pattern increase exponentially
- users can accidentally (or intentially) exhaust your system's resources resulting in the equivalent of a DoS attack (bonus: no programming knowledge is required!)
For a more detailed explanation with examples, see the geometric complexity section.
Jump to the performance section to see how Braces solves this problem in comparison to other libraries.
At minimum, brace patterns with sets limited to two elements have quadradic or O(n^2) complexity. But the complexity of the algorithm increases exponentially as the number of sets, and elements per set, increases, which is O(n^c).
For example, the following sets demonstrate quadratic (O(n^2)) complexity:
{1,2}{3,4} => (2X2) => 13 14 23 24
{1,2}{3,4}{5,6} => (2X2X2) => 135 136 145 146 235 236 245 246
But add an element to a set, and we get a n-fold Cartesian product with O(n^c) complexity:
{1,2,3}{4,5,6}{7,8,9} => (3X3X3) => 147 148 149 157 158 159 167 168 169 247 248
249 257 258 259 267 268 269 347 348 349 357
358 359 367 368 369
Now, imagine how this complexity grows given that each element is a n-tuple:
{1..100}{1..100} => (100X100) => 10,000 elements (38.4 kB)
{1..100}{1..100}{1..100} => (100X100X100) => 1,000,000 elements (5.76 MB)
Although these examples are clearly contrived, they demonstrate how brace patterns can quickly grow out of control.
More information
Interested in learning more about brace expansion?
Braces is not only screaming fast, it's also more accurate the other brace expansion libraries.
Fortunately there is a solution to the "brace bomb" problem: don't expand brace patterns into an array when they're used for matching.
Instead, convert the pattern into an optimized regular expression. This is easier said than done, and braces is the only library that does this currently.
The proof is in the numbers
Minimatch gets exponentially slower as patterns increase in complexity, braces does not. The following results were generated using braces() and minimatch.braceExpand(), respectively.
| Pattern | braces | [minimatch][] |
|---|---|---|
{1..9007199254740991}[^1] |
298 B (5ms 459ฮผs) |
N/A (freezes) |
{1..1000000000000000} |
41 B (1ms 15ฮผs) |
N/A (freezes) |
{1..100000000000000} |
40 B (890ฮผs) |
N/A (freezes) |
{1..10000000000000} |
39 B (2ms 49ฮผs) |
N/A (freezes) |
{1..1000000000000} |
38 B (608ฮผs) |
N/A (freezes) |
{1..100000000000} |
37 B (397ฮผs) |
N/A (freezes) |
{1..10000000000} |
35 B (983ฮผs) |
N/A (freezes) |
{1..1000000000} |
34 B (798ฮผs) |
N/A (freezes) |
{1..100000000} |
33 B (733ฮผs) |
N/A (freezes) |
{1..10000000} |
32 B (5ms 632ฮผs) |
78.89 MB (16s 388ms 569ฮผs) |
{1..1000000} |
31 B (1ms 381ฮผs) |
6.89 MB (1s 496ms 887ฮผs) |
{1..100000} |
30 B (950ฮผs) |
588.89 kB (146ms 921ฮผs) |
{1..10000} |
29 B (1ms 114ฮผs) |
48.89 kB (14ms 187ฮผs) |
{1..1000} |
28 B (760ฮผs) |
3.89 kB (1ms 453ฮผs) |
{1..100} |
22 B (345ฮผs) |
291 B (196ฮผs) |
{1..10} |
10 B (533ฮผs) |
20 B (37ฮผs) |
{1..3} |
7 B (190ฮผs) |
5 B (27ฮผs) |
When you need expansion, braces is still much faster.
(the following results were generated using braces.expand() and minimatch.braceExpand(), respectively)
| Pattern | braces | [minimatch][] |
|---|---|---|
{1..10000000} |
78.89 MB (2s 698ms 642ฮผs) |
78.89 MB (18s 601ms 974ฮผs) |
{1..1000000} |
6.89 MB (458ms 576ฮผs) |
6.89 MB (1s 491ms 621ฮผs) |
{1..100000} |
588.89 kB (20ms 728ฮผs) |
588.89 kB (156ms 919ฮผs) |
{1..10000} |
48.89 kB (2ms 202ฮผs) |
48.89 kB (13ms 641ฮผs) |
{1..1000} |
3.89 kB (1ms 796ฮผs) |
3.89 kB (1ms 958ฮผs) |
{1..100} |
291 B (424ฮผs) |
291 B (211ฮผs) |
{1..10} |
20 B (487ฮผs) |
20 B (72ฮผs) |
{1..3} |
5 B (166ฮผs) |
5 B (27ฮผs) |
If you'd like to run these comparisons yourself, see test/support/generate.js.
Install dev dependencies:
npm i -d && npm benchmarkBraces is more accurate, without sacrificing performance.
# range (expanded)
braces x 29,040 ops/sec ยฑ3.69% (91 runs sampled))
minimatch x 4,735 ops/sec ยฑ1.28% (90 runs sampled)
# range (optimized for regex)
braces x 382,878 ops/sec ยฑ0.56% (94 runs sampled)
minimatch x 1,040 ops/sec ยฑ0.44% (93 runs sampled)
# nested ranges (expanded)
braces x 19,744 ops/sec ยฑ2.27% (92 runs sampled))
minimatch x 4,579 ops/sec ยฑ0.50% (93 runs sampled)
# nested ranges (optimized for regex)
braces x 246,019 ops/sec ยฑ2.02% (93 runs sampled)
minimatch x 1,028 ops/sec ยฑ0.39% (94 runs sampled)
# set (expanded)
braces x 138,641 ops/sec ยฑ0.53% (95 runs sampled)
minimatch x 219,582 ops/sec ยฑ0.98% (94 runs sampled)
# set (optimized for regex)
braces x 388,408 ops/sec ยฑ0.41% (95 runs sampled)
minimatch x 44,724 ops/sec ยฑ0.91% (89 runs sampled)
# nested sets (expanded)
braces x 84,966 ops/sec ยฑ0.48% (94 runs sampled)
minimatch x 140,720 ops/sec ยฑ0.37% (95 runs sampled)
# nested sets (optimized for regex)
braces x 263,340 ops/sec ยฑ2.06% (92 runs sampled)
minimatch x 28,714 ops/sec ยฑ0.40% (90 runs sampled)Contributing
Pull requests and stars are always welcome. For bugs and feature requests, please create an issue.
Running Tests
Running and reviewing unit tests is a great way to get familiarized with a library and its API. You can install dependencies and run tests with the following command:
$ npm install && npm testBuilding docs
(This project's readme.md is generated by verb, please don't edit the readme directly. Any changes to the readme must be made in the .verb.md readme template.)
To generate the readme, run the following command:
$ npm install -g verbose/verb#dev verb-generate-readme && verb| Commits | Contributor |
|---|---|
| 197 | jonschlinkert |
| 4 | doowb |
| 1 | es128 |
| 1 | eush77 |
| 1 | hemanth |
| 1 | wtgtybhertgeghgtwtg |
Jon Schlinkert
Copyright ยฉ 2019, Jon Schlinkert. Released under the MIT License.
This file was generated by verb-generate-readme, v0.8.0, on April 08, 2019.
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