Feature Request: Allow dir_ls glob/regex patterns to ignore the supplied path

[orgadish]

dir_ls glob/regex patterns act on the whole path, including what was passed by path. Often this can be accidentally misleading since the folder path itself contains a pattern (maybe even accidentally) that breaks the intended logic.

Request: it would be great if there were an argument to dir_ls to ignore the part of the path that was already supplied in path (effectively filtering only on the relative path).

Simple reprex:

temp <- tempfile("T Cell") |> fs::dir_create()

tryCatch({
   good_path <- fs::path(temp, "T Cell Data.csv")
   bad_path <-  fs::path(temp, "Other Data.csv")
   
   readr::write_csv(data.frame(), good_path)
   readr::write_csv(data.frame(), bad_path)
   
   ls_result <- fs::dir_ls(temp, glob="*T Cell*.csv")
   
   message("good_path found: ", good_path %in% ls_result)
   message("bad_path found: ", bad_path %in% ls_result)
},
finally = fs::dir_delete(temp) 
)
#> good_path found: TRUE
#> bad_path found: TRUE

^{Created on 2026-03-31 with reprex v2.1.1}

Simple implementation extending current dir_ls with argument filter_on_relative_path.

dir_ls <- function (path = ".", all = FALSE, recurse = FALSE, type = "any", 
    glob = NULL, regexp = NULL, invert = FALSE, fail = TRUE, filter_on_relative_path = FALSE,
    ..., recursive) 
{
    assert_no_missing(path)
    if (!missing(recursive)) {
        recurse <- recursive
        warning("`recursive` is deprecated, please use `recurse` instead", 
            immediate. = TRUE, call. = FALSE)
    }
    old <- path_expand(path)
    files <- as.character(dir_map(old, identity, all, recurse, 
        type, fail))

    # Simple case (same as existing)
    if (!filter_on_relative_path)
        return(path_filter(files, glob, regexp, invert = invert, ...))

   # Filter on relative path only.
   rel_files <- fs::path_rel(files, start=old)
   
   files[match(fs::path_filter(rel_files, glob, regexp, invert = invert, ...), rel_files)]
}

[orgadish]

If approved, I'm happy to put in a PR with the implementation above (and associated testing), given an agreed name for the argument (perhaps just relative?)

[arnaudgallou]

I've the same request. dir_ls(regex =) seems to match against the full path as opposed to list.files(pattern =) that matches against the actual elements of a path. The latter is more convenient and less confusing because it makes it easy to avoid matching undesired files or directories using ^ (rather than /).

dir <- fs::path_temp()
dir <- fs::dir_create(dir, "fs")

for (file in c("foo", "barfoo")) {
  fs::file_create(dir, file)
}

dir |> 
  fs::dir_ls(regexp = "foo$", recurse = TRUE) |> 
  fs::path_file() |> 
  print()
#> [1] "barfoo" "foo"

dir |> 
  fs::dir_ls(regexp = "^foo$", recurse = TRUE) |> 
  fs::path_file() |> 
  print()
#> character(0)

dir |> 
  list.files(pattern = "^foo$", recursive = TRUE) |> 
  print()
#> [1] "foo"

^{Created on 2026-07-06 with reprex v2.1.1}

I'd prefer dir_list() to behave like list.files() here. Also, I find it confusing that dir_ls(regexp = "^foo$") returns character(0). It would be useful to have a hint explaining why there's no match because the regexp is valid and the file exists.