Wildcard Masks

Wildcard masks are patterns of special characters used to filter files/folder names or transfers. When a wildcard mask is matched against a filename, the two patterns are compared, letter-by-letter, from left to right until a mismatch occurs. If all the characters in both patterns compare positively, the filename matches the Wildcard Mask.

Wildcard mask characters

• ? Will match any singe character

• * Will match any sequence of characters (including no characters at all), terminated by the next character in the mask.

• [ ] Will match any character in the character set enclosed in the brackets. This can also be a range of characters

• ! If the opening bracket is followed by and exclamation point, it will match any character NOT in the set.

Wildcard Mask Examples

Mask	Will Match	Will NOT Match
*	all files	--
x?z	xyz, xaz	xyy, zyz
a[xyz]c	axc, ayc, azc	abc, awc
a[!xyz]c	abc, adc, awc	axc, ayc, azc
a[a-c]d	aad, abd, acd	add, axd