[Unix; common] To expand special characters in a wildcarded name, or
the act of so doing (the action is also called globbing). The Unix
conventions for filename wildcarding have become sufficiently
pervasive that many hackers use some of them in written English,
especially in email or news on technical topics. Those commonly
encountered include the following:
* wildcard for any string (see also {UN*X})
? wildcard for any single character (generally read this way only at
the beginning or in the middle of a word)
[] delimits a wildcard matching any of the enclosed characters
{} alternation of comma-separated alternatives; thus, `foo{baz,qux}'
would be read as `foobaz' or `fooqux'
Some examples: "He said his name was [KC]arl" (expresses ambiguity).
"I don't read talk.politics.*" (any of the talk.politics subgroups on
{Usenet}). Other examples are given under the entry for {X}. Note
that glob patterns are similar, but not identical, to those used in
{regexp}s.
Historical note: The jargon usage derives from glob, the name of a
subprogram that expanded wildcards in archaic pre-Bourne versions of
the Unix shell.
[glossary]
[Reference(s) to this entry by made by: {ASCII}{bang path}{regexp}{UN*X}{X}]