Finder name glob does not behave as documented

[Bilge]

Symfony version(s) affected: 5.3.6

Description
According to the Finder::name() docblock, the following two calling conventions are equivalent:

symfony/src/Symfony/Component/Finder/Finder.php

Lines 167 to 168 in bf8ecc4

	* $finder->name('*.php')
	* $finder->name('/\.php$/') // same as above

However, this is demonstrably false for dot-files.

How to reproduce

Given the file .foo.php and $finder is called with ignoreDotFiles(false):

• $finder->name('*.php') will not match.
• $finder->name('/\.php$/') will match.

This is because *.php is actually translated to the following regular expression: #^(?=[^\.])[^/]*\.php$#. The assertion prevents the file starting with a dot (.). (Aside: that assertion should probably have been written as (?!\.) for clarity).

It is unclear what is the intended behaviour here. By default, shells like Bash will not match dotfiles with a glob like this, although they can be set to match dot-files (with shopt -s dotglob). In any case, Finder's own documentation claims that the glob should match because the glob is equivalent to a suffix-only match, failing to mention that dot-files are implicitly excluded from such globs.

Possible Solution
Either:

• Allow globs to match dot-files.
• Change the documentation to stop pretending the glob and simple suffix-only regex are equivalent.

My view is that, from the perspective of Finder, the only correct solution can be to allow globs to match dot-files, because Finder has its own way of excluding dot-files (with ignoreDotFiles()). But then we are stuck with the problem that fixing the issue is a breaking change within Finder.

[carsonbot]

Hey, thanks for your report!
There has not been a lot of activity here for a while. Is this bug still relevant? Have you managed to find a workaround?

[carsonbot]

Hello? This issue is about to be closed if nobody replies.

[stof]

I suggest updating the doc to explain the current behavior instead of doing a BC break

[carsonbot]

Hey, thanks for your report!
There has not been a lot of activity here for a while. Is this bug still relevant? Have you managed to find a workaround?

[Bilge]

Still relevant.

[VincentLanglet]

I suggest updating the doc to explain the current behavior instead of doing a BC break

Calling this behavior a BC break is debatable.
I just spend half an hour to understand why

Finder::create()->files()->name('*.twig')->ignoreDotFiles(false);

as expected.

Changing the behavior

• Won't change anything for people writing things like Finder::create()->files()->name('*.twig'), because by default ignoring dot files is set to true.
• Will allow code like Finder::create()->files()->name('*.twig')->ignoreDotFiles(false) to NOT ignore dot files, which is exactly what people wants.

To me, it could be considered as a bugfix.

[carsonbot]

Hey, thanks for your report!
There has not been a lot of activity here for a while. Is this bug still relevant? Have you managed to find a workaround?

[VincentLanglet]

Still relevant

[nicolas-grekas]

The phpdoc should be changed. *.php shouldn't match dot-files. PR welcome.

[VincentLanglet]

I opened #50921 then

[Bilge]

When a bug becomes a feature.

[VincentLanglet]

When a bug becomes a feature.

In php glob('*') doesn't return the dot files ; glob('.*') does