wild card
(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)