Most operating systems and many applications that allow users to work with files support wildcard patterns, in which special characters are used to create filename patterns that can match many...

Most operating systems and many applications that allow users to work with files support wildcard patterns, in which special characters are used to create filename patterns that can match many different files. The most common special characters used in wildcard matching are ?, which matches any single character, and *, which matches any sequence of characters. Other characters in a filename pattern must match the corresponding character in a filename. For example, the pattern *.* matches any filename that contains a period, such as EnglishWords.dat or HelloWorld.cpp, but does not match filenames that do not contain a period. Similarly, the pattern test.? matches any filename that consists of the name test, a period, and a single character; thus, test.? matches test.h but not test.cpp. These patterns can be combined in any way you like. For example, the pattern ??* matches any filename containing at least two characters.