Wild Cards

Wildcards in Filenames

UNIX allows wildcards in almost all commands -- it is actually a feature of the shell. Caution: UNIX also uses the wildcard characters in pattern matching, but the meaning is only similar, not identical.
UNIX Wildcards


? any single character, except a leading dot
* zero or more characters, except a leading dot
[ ] defines a class of characters ( - for range, ! to exclude)


UNIX Examples:

[abc]?? 3 character filename beginning with "a", "b", or "c".
[1-9][A-Z] 2 character filename starting with a number, and ending with an uppercase letter.
[!A-Z]?? 3 character filename that does not begin with an uppercase letter.
*e[0-9]f any file ending with "e", a single number, and "f".

Examples:

*------ Any Number of character

?  ------single Character

[ijk]  ---- single character either i,j or k

[x-z] ---- range

[!ijk]

[!x-z]

chap01 chap02 chap03 chap04

ls chap0*

echo *

ls chap?

ls chap??

matching dot :

ls .???*  i want to know

2) ls chap0[124]

ls chap0[1-4]

Escaping:

For example file with chap*

ls chap\* this one also

escaping space:

cd my\ Document