fnmatch() checks if the passed
string would match the
given shell wildcard
pattern.
This is especialy usefull for filenames, but may also be
used on regular strings. The average user may be used to
shell patterns or at least in their simplest form to '?' and '*'
wildcards so using fnmatch() instead
of
ereg() or preg_match() for frontend search
expression input may be way more convenient for
non-programming users.
See also glob(), ereg(),
preg_match() and the unix manpage on fnmatch(3) for flag names (as long as they are
not documented here ).