🤝 cpe match

Compare two CPE strings and check whether they match according to the cpe-skills matching algorithm. The first argument is the criteria CPE, the second is the target CPE.

Supports options for ignoring the version, using regex patterns on string fields, and specifying a version range.

Usage

cpe match [flags] <criteria-cpe> <target-cpe>

Arguments

Argument	Description
<criteria-cpe>	The criteria CPE string (2.2 or 2.3). Exactly two arguments are required.
<target-cpe>	The target CPE string (2.2 or 2.3) to test against the criteria.

Flags

Flag	Type	Default	Description
--ignore-version	bool	false	Ignore version when matching
--regex	bool	false	Use regex matching for string fields
--min-version	string	""	Minimum version for range matching (enables range matching)
--max-version	string	""	Maximum version for range matching (enables range matching)

This command also inherits the global flags --output, -o (text/json) and --no-color.

Internally the command always sets AllowSubVersions: true. Specifying either --min-version or --max-version enables VersionRange mode.

How It Works

The diagram below shows how cpe match parses both arguments, builds a MatchOptions struct from its flags, calls MatchCPE, and reports the result.

Examples

Wildcard criteria matches a specific target

cpe match "cpe:2.3:a:microsoft:windows:*" "cpe:2.3:a:microsoft:windows:10"

Expected output:

MATCH: cpe:/a:microsoft:windows matches cpe:/a:microsoft:windows:10

Ignore version while matching

cpe match --ignore-version "cpe:2.3:a:microsoft:windows:10" "cpe:2.3:a:microsoft:windows:11"

Expected output:

MATCH: cpe:/a:microsoft:windows:10 matches cpe:/a:microsoft:windows:11

Version range matching (JSON output)

cpe -o json match --min-version 3.0 --max-version 4.0 \
  "cpe:2.3:a:apache:log4j" "cpe:2.3:a:apache:log4j:3.5"

Expected output:

{"match": true, "criteria": "cpe:/a:apache:log4j", "target": "cpe:/a:apache:log4j:3.5"}

Output

• text (default): MATCH: <criteria> matches <target> or NO MATCH: <criteria> does not match <target>.
• json: {"match": <bool>, "criteria": "<2.2 URI>", "target": "<2.2 URI>"}.

Both the criteria and target are rendered as their CPE 2.2 URI form in the output.

Related API Modules

• Matching — MatchCPE and MatchOptions
• Advanced Matching — AdvancedMatchCPE, NewAdvancedMatchOptions
• Version Compare — CompareVersions, IsVersionInRange (used by range matching)