wildcard character -  a kind of placeholder represented by a single character

introduction:

Do you remember about scanf() in C language?

scanf() is used for reading input from console and store it into variable.

Wildcard character can be used to scanf() , reading file with specific filename.

description:

Wildcard character( 萬用字元) is a kind of placeholder represented by a single character.

All specific filename can be represented with some single character. You don't have to search all the possibilities.

For Example, I wanna search the file which filename is one of  them{"aaa","aab","aac","aad",...,"aaz"}.

I have to search 1 time instead of 26 times if I search the file with wildcard character.

Application:

If you wanna search lots of file or data, you can use it.

(1)File pattern

(2)Database

(3)Regular expression

Resource:

more details on:

Wildcard character - Wikipedia