What does the double asterisk(**) mean in the path?

wildcards-in-paths.md

What does the double asterisk(**) mean in the path?

There's two meaning of wildcards in paths for file collections.

• * is a simple, non-recursive wildcard representing zero or more characters which you can use for paths and file names.
• ** is a recursive wildcard which can only be used with paths, not file names.

For examples,

• /var/log/** will match all files in /var/log and all files in all child directories, recursively.
• /var/log/**/*.log will match all files whose names end in .log in /var/log and all files in all child directories, recursively.
• /home/*/.bashrc will match all .bashrc files in all user's home directories.
• /home/*/.ssh/**/*.key will match all files ending in .key in all user's .ssh directories in all user's home directories.

Reference

• https://help.sumologic.com/03Send-Data/Sources/04Reference-Information-for-Sources/Using-Wildcards-in-Paths#specifying-paths-to-collect-from

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Hi, sorry for this but what is the difference between path: /* and path: / ? What does he one without the asterisk not include?

@andrewrotherham

Hi, sorry for this but what is the difference between path: /* and path: / ? What does he one without the asterisk not include?

path: /* means all directories and files under path: /, while path: / simply means the path: directory itself.

@bennlee thankyou for your respectful reply

I want to set a path for below example
path: "apps/indexing-search/microservice1/overlays/aws/eu-west-1/dev/appconfig.yaml"

Similar to below so that microservice1/..n/ will come dynamically and region/env come as dynamically.
Similar to this but i saw multiple ** can not be added in the single path so how can i create it.
- path: "apps/indexing-search/**/eu-west-1/**/appconfig.yaml"

@rajatrj16
You can use multiple ** in a single path. Is there a problem with the given example path?

@rajatrj16 You can use multiple ** in a single path. Is there a problem with the given example path?

yeah It did not worked as mentioned here Multiple recursive expressions within the path are not supported.
But I was able to move ahead for my scenario using - path: "apps/indexing-search/**/eu-west-1/*/appconfig.yaml" #(Single *)
but afraid what if there were multiple hierarchies it could not have worked.

@rajatrj16
Oh, I see. It doesn't seem to be supported by sumologic.
(I'll also fix the text. Thank you for your correction.)

As you said in the above case, I think we should consider reducing the dynamic depth on the structure level or distributing the collector to the per dynamic depth.
This way could also reduces the searching load, so I think it would be better to consider it as an alternative.