Capterra Glossary
A wildcard character is a special term used to describe an integer, letter, or symbol that can be used to represent multiple characters. A wildcard character is often referred to using an asterisk or a question mark, wherein the former represents a set of characters, and the latter represents one character.
Wildcard characters enable IT administrators to write shorter computer commands, eliminating the need to specifically mention each item that a command covers. For instance, say an IT administrator wants to search a computer system for all notepad files using a Windows command prompt. They could simply type ‘dir*.exe.’ into the Windows command line interface to display all notepad files in the directory instead of typing out the entire search command.
Small and midsize IT firms often use wildcard characters when searching computer directories, and structured query language (SQL) relational databases for specific data file types. This decreases the length of commands that IT administrators or programmers have to type, optimizing their workflows and allowing them to focus on more important computing tasks.