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Status Future consideration
Workspace z/OS
Categories Shell & Utilities
Created by Guest
Created on Mar 3, 2026

Add composite patterns to sh

Composite patterns are a regular expression-like extension to shell glob patterns. For example, the composite pattern *(a) matches zero or more "a" characters. Composite patterns are useful. In my experience, they are often used in KornShell scripts.

KornShells on all platforms (Linux, AIX, and others) have them. The AIX "POSIX shell" (sh) also has them (although they aren't in POSIX). sh on z/OS does not have them, despite implementing many KornShell features. Please add them; it would ease porting Unix scripts to z/OS. 

There are two levels of composite patterns: the ksh88 level, described here in the AIX documentation; and the ksh93 level, which includes further extensions. (ksh88 and ksh93 refer to two implementations of the KornShell.) I suggest you implement just the ksh88 level. The ksh93 extensions are obscure and little-used.

Idea priority Medium