Parameters

pattern

The pattern to match against. Usually, the pattern will contain wildcards like '?' and '*'.

Wildcards to be used in pattern parameter

Wildcard	Description
?	Question mark will match any single character. For example, pattern "file?.txt" will match "file1.txt" and "fileA.txt", but will not match "file10.txt".
*	Asterisk will match zero or more characters. For example, pattern "foo*.xml" will match "foo.xml" and "foobar.xml".
[ ]	Square brackets are used to create ranges of ASCII codepoints or sets of characters. For example, pattern "index.php[45]" will match "index.php4" and "index.php5", but will not match "index.phpt". Well known ranges are [0-9], [a-z], and [A-Z]. Multiple sets and ranges can be used at the same time, for example [0-9a-zABC].
!	Exclamation mark is used to negate characters within square brackets. For example, "[!A-Z]*.html" will match "demo.html", but will not match "Demo.html".
\	Backslash is used to escape special characters. For example, "Name\?" will match "Name?", but will not match "Names".

filename

The tested string. This function is especially useful 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 preg_match() for frontend search expression input may be way more convenient for non-programming users.

flags

The value of flags can be any combination of the following flags, joined with the binary OR (|) operator.

A list of possible flags for fnmatch()

Flag	Description
FNM_NOESCAPE	Disable backslash escaping.
FNM_PATHNAME	Slash in string only matches slash in the given pattern.
FNM_PERIOD	Leading period in string must be exactly matched by period in the given pattern.
FNM_CASEFOLD	Caseless match. Part of the GNU extension.