[VBScript] Helping out with wildcarded directory searches

At Emulate The Dir Command Via Vbscript... ( Vbscript ) Christian D'heureuse had written a ListDir Function to list files using wildcards. Someone else wanted filtration and another suggested regular expressions. The following works a little faster than the latter and gives fine control over what is acceptable and what is not.

The following collects all the files to a comma delimited list (you may want to put it in an array). Function CollectFiles( theDirectory ) Dim oFSO, oDir, oFiles, aFile Dim theResult Dim a(), i theResult = "" Set oFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") On Error Resume Next Set oDir = oFSO.GetFolder( theDirectory ) Set oFiles = oDir.Files If Err.Number = 0 Then ReDim a( oFiles.Count - 1) i = 0 For Each aFile in oFiles a( i ) = aFile.Path '& "\" & aFile.Name i = i + 1 Next theResult = Join( a, "," ) End If CollectFiles = theResult End Function I then used this function to do the filtration Function PassedThroughFilters( strString, ByRef arrInclude, ByRef arrExclude ) Dim bResult Dim bDone Dim arrFilter Dim i bResult = False bDone = False For i = 0 To UBound( arrExclude ) arrFilter = arrExclude( i ) If BeginsWith( strString, arrFilter( 0 ), True ) And EndsWith( strString, arrFilter( 1 ), True ) Then bResult = False bDone = True Exit For End If Next If bDone = False Then 'not excluded, will it be included? For i = 0 To UBound( arrInclude ) arrFilter = arrInclude( i ) If BeginsWith( strString, arrFilter( 0 ), True ) And EndsWith( strString, arrFilter( 1 ), True ) Then bResult = True bDone = True Exit For End If Next End If PassedThroughFilters = bResult End Function and tied it all together as below (this is cut from a project file and the ellipses indicate code removed.) strDir = ParseEnvVar( strDir ) WScript.Echo "Collecting files in " & strDir strFiles = CollectFiles( ParseEnvVar( strDir ) ) arrFiles = Split( strFiles, "," ) arrFilesCount = UBound( arrFiles ) ... iFileCount = 0 For i = 0 To arrFilesCount If iFileCount = 0 Then strOutput = strAllExtras End If strFilename = arrFiles( i ) If PassedThroughFilters( BaseName( strFilename ), arrInclude, arrExclude ) = True Then WScript.Echo "Accepted: " & strFilename Log "Accepted: " & strFilename iFileCount = iFileCount + 1 ... Else Log "Rejected: " & strFilename End If Next The inclusions and exclusions are handled through arrays, and in my project these were drawn from .ini files, a part of which is recorded below [Filters] ExcludeCount=7 Exclude1=car_*0103.xls Exclude2=car_*0203.xls Exclude3=car_*0303.xls Exclude4=car_*0403.xls Exclude5=car_*0503.xls Exclude6=car_*0603.xls Exclude7=*.rar IncludeCount=16 Include1=car_210703.xls Include2=car_220703.xls Include3=car_230703.xls Include4=car_240703.xls Include5=car_250703.xls Include6=car_260703.xls Include7=car_270703.xls Include8=car_280703.xls Include9=car_290703.xls Include10=car_300703.xls Include11=car_310703.xls Include12=car_*0803.xls Include13=car_*0903.xls Include14=car_*1003.xls Include15=car_*1103.xls Include16=car_*1203.xls This all ran fairly fast and is better for speed than a regular expression mechanism, albeit at the cost of code size.