Wildcards

A wildcard is a symbol that takes the place of an unknown character or set of characters within a file name. The wildcard can be used in either the file name or the file's extension or in both. Commonly used wildcards are the asterisk ( * ), the question mark ( ? ), and the pound sign ( # ). The asterisk matches any sequence of characters, the question mark matches any single character, and the pound sign matches a single digit.

The Asterisk ( * )

The asterisk represents any number of unknown characters. Use it when filtering documents or files for which you have only partial names.

For example, if you enter "cheese*.txt" as your file pattern, the following files would be filtered: cheese.txt, cheesecake.txt, cheesedip.txt .

If you want to filter all text files for example, you could use "*.txt" as your file pattern.


The Question Mark ( ? )

The question mark represents only one unknown character. Use it when you have a list of files with very similar names.

For example, if you enter "l?ve.txt" as your file pattern, the following files will be filtered: love.txt, live.txt

However, it would not find leave.txt because the question mark only covers one character. To find two unknown characters, enter "l??ve.txt" as your file pattern.

The Pound Sign ( # )

The pound sign represents a single numeric digit between zero and nine (0-9).

For example, if you enter "take#.txt" as your file pattern, the following files will be filtered: take1.txt, take2.txt, take3.txt.

However, it would not find take12.txt because the pound sign only covers one digit. To find two unknown digits, enter "take##.txt" as your file pattern.