wildcard
also: glob, globbing, metacharacter
A special character or pattern used in the shell to match multiple filenames or strings without typing each one explicitly. Common wildcards include * (any characters), ? (single character), and [ ] (character class).
Wildcards are shell metacharacters that expand to match filenames or arguments based on patterns you specify. They allow you to work with multiple files concisely without listing each name individually.
The asterisk * matches zero or more characters of any kind. For example, ls *.txt lists all files ending in .txt. The question mark ? matches exactly one character, so rm file?.log removes file1.log and file2.log but not file10.log.
Character classes with square brackets [ ] match any single character inside the brackets. For instance, cat config[123].ini matches config1.ini, config2.ini, or config3.ini. You can also use ranges like [a-z] or [0-9].