<operating system, programming, text> (From card games in
which certain cards, often the joker, can act as any other
card) A special character or character sequence which matches
any character in a string comparison, like ellipsis ("...") in
ordinary written text.
In Unix filenames '?' matches any single character and '*'
matches any zero or more characters. In regular
expressions, '.' matches any one character and "[...]"
matches any one of the enclosed characters.
See also Backus-Naur Form.
(1997-07-16)
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