wild card

In computing, character which represents ‘any character’ in a search or command. When comparing strings, the computer does not seek a precise match for a wild card character. The most useful wildcards are ?, which matches any single character, and ∗, which matches any number of characters, including zero. Hence the DOS commands DEL ∗.∗ - delete all files - and COPY ∗.DOC - copy all files with the filename extension ‘DOC’.