http://sourceware.org/ml/libc-hacker/2002-11/msg00071.html When fnmatch detects an invalid multibyte character it should fall back to single byte matching, so that "*" has a chance to match such a string. Andreas. 2005-04-12 Andreas Schwab * posix/fnmatch.c (fnmatch): If conversion to wide character fails fall back to single byte matching. Index: posix/fnmatch.c =================================================================== diff -durN glibc-2.12.1.orig/posix/fnmatch.c glibc-2.12.1/posix/fnmatch.c --- glibc-2.12.1.orig/posix/fnmatch.c 2007-07-28 22:35:00.000000000 +0200 +++ glibc-2.12.1/posix/fnmatch.c 2009-11-13 00:50:39.000000000 +0100 @@ -327,6 +327,7 @@ # if HANDLE_MULTIBYTE if (__builtin_expect (MB_CUR_MAX, 1) != 1) { + const char *orig_pattern = pattern; mbstate_t ps; size_t n; const char *p; @@ -382,10 +383,8 @@ wstring = (wchar_t *) alloca ((n + 1) * sizeof (wchar_t)); n = mbsrtowcs (wstring, &p, n + 1, &ps); if (__builtin_expect (n == (size_t) -1, 0)) - /* Something wrong. - XXX Do we have to set `errno' to something which mbsrtows hasn't - already done? */ - return -1; + /* Something wrong. Fall back to single byte matching. */ + goto try_singlebyte; if (p) { memset (&ps, '\0', sizeof (ps)); @@ -397,10 +396,8 @@ prepare_wstring: n = mbsrtowcs (NULL, &string, 0, &ps); if (__builtin_expect (n == (size_t) -1, 0)) - /* Something wrong. - XXX Do we have to set `errno' to something which mbsrtows hasn't - already done? */ - return -1; + /* Something wrong. Fall back to single byte matching. */ + goto try_singlebyte; wstring = (wchar_t *) alloca ((n + 1) * sizeof (wchar_t)); assert (mbsinit (&ps)); (void) mbsrtowcs (wstring, &string, n + 1, &ps); @@ -408,6 +405,9 @@ return internal_fnwmatch (wpattern, wstring, wstring + n, flags & FNM_PERIOD, flags, NULL); + + try_singlebyte: + pattern = orig_pattern; } # endif /* mbstate_t and mbsrtowcs or _LIBC. */