Web Publishing: Wildcard Patterns

	Division of Information Technology Web Publishing @ SFSU Wildcard Patterns
Wildcard Patterns	Wildcard patterns are an easy way to specify a number of different items all at the same time. With wildcard patterns, a number of strings can all match your pattern at the same time, saving you the trouble of having to enter each possible string that you want to match.
Specifying a Pattern	When you specify a pattern in the " .nsconfig" file, you create a string that has special characters in it. They define a particular pattern that the string must match - through them, you specify important parts of a string, and specify how a string must match the less important parts. They are very similar to wildcards under UNIX and MS-DOS.
Special Characters	The special characters you can use are: `` matches zero or more characters. `?` matches exactly one character, and it can be any character. `(onetwo)` is an "or" expression. It will match either the substring one, or the substring two. The substrings can contain other special characters such as $. `$` matches the end of the string. This is really only useful in "or" expressions. `[abc]` matches one occurence of the characters a, b, or c. Within these expressions, the only character that needs to be escaped in this is ], all others are not special. `[a-z]` matches one occurence of a character between a and z. `[^az]` matches any character except a or z. `~` followed by another shell expression will remove any pattern matching the shell expression from the match list (a logical not) Additionally, if you want to use a special character, but without the special meaning, you can precede it with a backslash (`\`).

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Last modified February 11, 2008 by the Web Team