Metacharacters are special characters that have particular meaning to your shell that dollar sign or hash mark. The two I want to look at are the asterisk and the question mark. The following shows what they mean to the shell.
Extending our talk of listing files, you could list all files containing ackle by using this command: $ ls *ackle* hackle hackles tackles Similarly, you could find all the words that start with an h like this: $ ls h* hackle hackles Now, if you want to see all the seven-letter words in your directory, use this command: $ ls ??????? hackles tackles Each question mark represents a single letter position. |