Wildcard character: Information from Answers.com

For other meanings of 'wild card' see wild card.

The term wildcard character has the following meanings:

1 Telecommunication
2 Computing
3 References
4 See also
5 External links

Telecommunication

In telecommunications, a wildcard character is a character that may be substituted for any of a defined subset of all possible characters.

In high-frequency (HF) radio automatic link establishment, the wildcard character "?" may be substituted for any one of the 36 characters, "A" through "Z" and "0" through "9."
Whether the wildcard character represents a single character or a string of characters must be specified.

Computing

In computer (software) technology, a wildcard character can be used to substitute for any other character or characters in a string.

Files and Directories

When specifying file names (or paths) in [CP/M]], DOS, Microsoft Windows and Unix-like operating systems, the asterisk character("*") substitutes for any zero or more characters, and the question mark (?) substitutes for any one character. In Unix-like operating systems, a ranges of characters in square brackets substitute for all the characters in their range, such as [A-Za-z] can substitute for any single capitalized or lowercase letter. Matching wildcard patterns to multiple files or paths is referred to as glob expansion.

Databases

In SQL, wildcard characters can be used in "LIKE" expressions; the percent sign (%) matches zero or more characters, and underscore (_) a single character. In Microsoft Access, wildcard characters can be used in "LIKE" expressions; the asterisk sign (*) matches zero or more characters, and question mark (?) a single character.

Regular Expressions

In many regular expression implementations, the period (.) is the wildcard character for a single character.

References

This article incorporates public domain material from the General Services Administration document "Federal Standard 1037C" (in support of MIL-STD-188).

External links

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

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	glob (computer jargon)
	Splatbook
	Escape character

Wildcard character

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