How to check if the value of a variable has a specific character?

Question

I'm trying to make a vimscript that will read the .gitignore file, return it's values as a List and check for paths that has wildcards eg: /vim/snippets/*, vim/**/*.

let g:ignored = readfile("/home/user/Projects/dotfiles/.gitignore")

let c=0
while c < len(g:ignored)

  let g:ignoredPath = ignored[c]
  let c += 1

  echo g:ignoredPath

endwhile

I want to check g:ignored variable for possible values with wildcards but how can I do that? I'm guessing I have to use regex in an execute or something. But I don't know the right syntax at all.

Answer 1

The Function you are searching is matchstr it returns the matched string or if the pattern is not found, an empty string.

For your example you should note: if the expression given to matchstr is a List the matching item is returned and the type isn't changed. So it is possible that the returned item isn't a string if your list consist of other datatypes.

but as always you can read all that in :h matchstr.

Note: There is also :h matchlist which can work with capturing groups (in vim called submatches) and :h matchstrpost which also returns the start and end position of the match.