Wildcard
Symbol used to replace or represent one or more characters. Wildcards or wild characters are commonly either an asterisk (*) or question mark (?). Below are some examples of how a wildcard may be used:
Searching for a file that has "comp" anywhere in the file name in Microsoft Windows 95 and above.
Click Start / Find or Search
Click for files or folders
In the files or folders named text box, type "*comp*"
Specify the location to search for the file and click Find or Search now.
Listing files in a Linux variant or Unix variant that begin with comp.
ls comp*
Deleting files in MS-DOS that begin with comp and end with a .txt extension.
del comp*.txt
Listing files in MS-DOS that contain c, mp and any other character in-between.
dir c?mp
Deleting files in a Linux or Unix variant that contain c, mp and any character in-between.
rm c?mp
Excel formula to search for any character using the * wildcard in cells B1 through B6 and if found perform use SUM to add all values between A1 and A6.
=SUMIF(A1:A6,"*",B1:B6)
Below this line would list all files of all types in the command prompt.
dir *.*
Also see: Asterisk, Glob, Meta-character
