A Wildcard is a symbol used for representing other characters.
Wildcards are mainly used to increase the efficiency and flexibility of searches in Linux.
They are mainly used to match the patterns of directories, files and its content in the system.
We can use as many as we want in patterns for searching.
Star Wildcard- *
It is used for representing any number of characters.
Star Wildcard indicates that there may be 1 Character or more than 1 Characters.
For Example:
Question Mark Wildcard- ?
It is used for representing only one character.
Question Mark Wildcard indicates that there will be only 1 Character.
For Example:
Bracket value Wildcard- []
It is used for representing a range of Characters.
Question Mark Wildcard will match characters that are enclosed in square braces.
for Example s[an]e will match only sae and sne.
we can also specify range of characters in braces like h[a-d]e, which will match only hae, hbe, hce, hde.
We can also specify ! mark in braces that indicates to search the patterns that are not matching the characters in braces.
For Example s[!an]e will search all files and directories except the pattern sae and sne.
good