A: an ****** or a ?????? Is usually accepted
It's a wildcard which means any single character. For instance: > dir ???.txt This will list all 3-letter file names that have a .txt extension in the current folder. An asterisk can also be used as a wildcard and represents any group of characters. > dir *.txt This will list all file names that have a .txt extension in the current folder.
it is a wildcard for each unknown letter in a command. If you want to find all files in a directory that start with a and have a three letter file extention, you would use the command dir a*.???
Globbing is the process of expanding a non-specific file name containing a wildcard character into a set of specific file names that exist in storage on a computer, server, or network. A wildcard is a symbol that can stand for one or more characters. The most common wildcard symbols are the question mark (?) for a single character and the asterisk (*) for a contiguous string of characters regards, Sarabhjeet Singh Khalsa
wild card
wildcard character is a special character that represents one or more other characters. The most commonly used wildcard characters are the asterisk (*), which typically represents zero or more characters in a string of characters, and the questionmark (?), which typically represents any one character. For example, in searching: run* would mean "any word that starts with 'run' and has any kind of ending." If you entered "run*" at a search engine that offered a wildcard character capability, you would get results for run, runs, running, runner, runners - in short, any possible word that might begin with the three letters. Wildcard characters are used in regular expressions (a form of programming in which input data is modified based on specified patterns) and in searching through file directories for similar file names (for example, if all the work files on a project start with the characters "P5," you could easily locate all the project files by simply searching for "P5*"). A wildcard character is a type of meta character . In various games of playing cards, a wild card is a designated card in the deck of cards (for example, the two of spades) that can be used as though it were any possible card.A question mark is used to match any single character. So:b?bwould match bib, bob, and bub, but not bulb.An asterisk matches zero or more characters. So:s*dwould match sad, said, summed, and so forth.bra*would match bra (remember zero or more), brad, branch, and so forth.
wildcard character is a special character that represents one or more other characters. The most commonly used wildcard characters are the asterisk (*), which typically represents zero or more characters in a string of characters, and the questionmark (?), which typically represents any one character. For example, in searching: run* would mean "any word that starts with 'run' and has any kind of ending." If you entered "run*" at a search engine that offered a wildcard character capability, you would get results for run, runs, running, runner, runners - in short, any possible word that might begin with the three letters. Wildcard characters are used in regular expressions (a form of programming in which input data is modified based on specified patterns) and in searching through file directories for similar file names (for example, if all the work files on a project start with the characters "P5," you could easily locate all the project files by simply searching for "P5*"). A wildcard character is a type of meta character . In various games of playing cards, a wild card is a designated card in the deck of cards (for example, the two of spades) that can be used as though it were any possible card.A question mark is used to match any single character. So:b?bwould match bib, bob, and bub, but not bulb.An asterisk matches zero or more characters. So:s*dwould match sad, said, summed, and so forth.bra*would match bra (remember zero or more), brad, branch, and so forth.
Its a wildcard for one character. (Example): if you want to find files in the directory that start with A & have a three letter file extension, you would use: a*.???
no, it isn't :(
a file name can contain any type of character, it can be start from any character,number& can start with symbol also.
The asterisk is a special character and cannot be used in the names of any kind of file.
Behavior
You cannot have a file name containing a question mark; it is an invalid character. However, you can use the question mark as a wildcard. E.g., to list every .txt file that has exactly two characters in its file name you would use the following command: dir ??.txt The '?' wildcard simply means any one character. If you wish to specify any group of characters, use the asterisk wildcard instead: dir *.txt For more information, look up "wildcard" in the command line documentation. Most systems limit a file name to alphabet letters A-Z (and a-z) and numbers 0-9 and some special characters such as "$", "_", "#" with a single period separating the name part from an extension part (i.e. document.txt spreadsheet.xls). However, the actual directory structure in modern systems uses 8-bit characters for the file name so it is not impossible to have "invalid" characters in a file name. On the Microsoft platforms, a system or hardware misadventure can resulted in a corrupted file name entry with punctuation or non-printable characters in the file name. Some utilities deal with this by displaying question mark characters as printable substitutes for them. Unix/linux implementations, being less restrictive, allow file names to have non-printable characters by using the backslash ("\") escape code.