Support for wildcards in command line

[prabirshrestha]

It would be great if we could have wildcard support for files.

tsc -w -m amd -t es5 **/*.ts

Currently we need to use unix commands.

find . -name "*.ts" | xargs tsc -w -m amd -t es5

There are also cases when we would like to have wildcards for multiple different folders

tsc -w -m amd -t es5 _generated/**/*.ts Typescript/**/*.ts

[prabirshrestha]

Also seems like tsconfig.json doesn't support wildcards.

[danquirk]

Correct, tsconfig doesn't currently support wildcards or globs. There are bugs already tracking the suggestion for that.

[mhegazy]

related to glob support in tsconfig: #1927

[NaridaL]

How would one go about creating a test for this? I've found https://github.com/Microsoft/TypeScript/blob/master/tests/cases/unittests/matchFiles.ts, would something similar be applicable or is that too low-level?

[mhegazy]

I do not think this file is used any more. looks like it was left there as a result of a bad merge. we should remove it.

The unit tests are under src/harness. the one closest is https://github.com/Microsoft/TypeScript/blob/master/src/harness/unittests/commandLineParsing.ts

that said, i think the importance of this issue is fairly low now. users have been using tsconfig.json, and we have not heard about this issue in over 2.5 years. so i would not spend much time on it. i think you can get better bang for your buck looking at other more recent issues.

[R3dXIII]

When I run tsc command I get file not found when using wildcards:
C:\Websites\hello-world>tsc *.ts && node main.js
error TS6053: File '*.ts' not found. Found 1 error.

[0x1026]

Entering 2023, and we're exactly like 2014, amazing

[cawoodm]

I find it hard to believe that tsc doesn't support wildcards. But it doesn't. Why do I have to tell it which individual files to compile?

Works Fine with individual files

tsc src/tmp.js --noEmit --checkJs
src/tmp.js:15:14 - error TS2345: Argument of type 'string' is not assignable to parameter of type 'number'.

15   return add('a', 2);
                ~~~

Will not compile all files

tsc src/*.js --noEmit --checkJs
error TS6053: File 'src/*.js' not found.
  The file is in the program because:
    Root file specified for compilation


Found 1 error.