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Difference between wildcards (*) and (?)

Jul 14, 2020

A wildcard character is a kind of placeholder represented by a single character, such as an asterisk (*) and question mark (?), which can be interpreted as a number of literal characters or an empty string. It is often used in file searches so the full name need not be typed. - From Wikipedia.

What is the difference between * and ?

*, it matches zero or more characters.

?, it matches exactly one character. If the question mark is placed at the end of the word, it will also match missing (zero) trailing characters.

Some examples

wis* matches "wise", "wisecleaner", and others whose first three letters are "wis".

wis? matches only "wise" and "wis".




[Reference]
Wildcard character
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