Selecting Multiple Targets

Wildcards, or globbing, are special characters used to represent patterns in filenames or paths. They allow you to operate on multiple files with a single command.

The Asterisk (*)

The asterisk matches zero or more characters in a filename.

1. Match all files: bash $ ls *

   Lists everything in the current directory

2. Match files with specific extension: bash $ cp *.txt backup/

   Copies all files ending in .txt to backup/

3. Match files starting with a prefix: bash $ rm log_*.bak

   Removes all files starting with 'log_' and ending in '.bak'

The Question Mark (?)

The question mark matches exactly one character.

bash $ ls file?.txt

Matches file1.txt, fileA.txt, fileZ.txt, but NOT file10.txt