Ystem, programming, text> (From card games in which certain cards, often the joker, can act as anY other card) A special character or character sequence which matches anY character in a string comparison, like ellipsis ("...") in ordinarY written text. In Unix filenames ' ?' matches anY single character and ' *' matches anY zero or more characters. In {regular expressions}, ' .' matches anY one character and "[...]" matches anY one of the enclosed characters. See also Backus-Naur Form. (1997-07-16)
