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The typographic star, and what a command shell does with it in a filename pattern.
As punctuation the asterisk points at a footnote or marks a required field. In a filename pattern typed at a shell it matches any run of characters, including none — and the shell expands it against real filenames before the command runs, so the command never sees the pattern at all. That expansion is the part people are surprised by.
The same character. The asterisk is the typographic mark; the glob wildcard is what a shell does with it in a filename pattern.
Drawn from the visual attributes recorded for each symbol. Only traits the two records disagree about are listed.
| Trait | Asterisk | Glob wildcard |
|---|---|---|
| Built from | stars, lines and dots | stars |
| Asterisk | Glob wildcard | |
|---|---|---|
| Read by | A person | The shell, before the command runs |
| What it matches | Nothing — it is a mark | Any sequence of characters, including none |
| Expanded before use | No | Yes, against existing filenames |
| Same as the regex star | No | No — see the Kleene star comparison |
| Relationship (from Symbolwise's records) | Commonly confused with Glob wildcard — The same character. The asterisk is the typographic mark; the glob wildcard is what a shell does with it in a filename pattern. | Commonly confused with Asterisk — The same character. The asterisk is the typographic mark; the glob wildcard is what a shell does with it. |
Unicode Code Chart: Basic Latin (U+0000–U+007F)
The Unicode Consortium · retrieved 2026-07-30
Authoritative for the character's code point, name and block only. Unicode assigns identity; it does not define what a symbol means in use.
Wikipedia · retrieved 2026-07-30
Tertiary reference. Used for widely-agreed identity and origin summary, not for contested detail or exact dates.
POSIX.1-2024, Shell Command Language
The Open Group / IEEE · retrieved 2026-08-01
Cited for the shell's operator grammar — which characters are operators and what they do — and for nothing outside it. It standardises a notation that already existed rather than inventing one, so records here describe documented practice that POSIX also pins down.
Wikipedia · retrieved 2026-08-01
Tertiary reference. Used for widely-agreed identity, origin and current use, not for contested detail or exact dates.
In a filename pattern the star stands for any run of characters. In a regular expression it does not stand for anything: it repeats whatever came immediately before it, zero or more times. So the glob pattern for 'anything' is a bare star, but the regular expression for 'anything' needs a dot before it. Reading one as the other is a real and consequential error.
Both are drawn as one continuous decorative stroke with a closed loop and a tail that crosses back over itself, which is why a description of the shape alone reaches both. The clef is far taller, spans a stave, and its spiral encircles one specific line — that encircled line is the note G, and it is the only reason the shape is drawn where it is.
The ampersand is a ligature of the Latin word et, still visible in some italic forms where the e and the t can be picked out. The Tironian et is a separate mark descending from a Roman shorthand, shaped like a small seven, and it is in daily public use in Ireland as the written form of 'agus'. A reader who knows only the ampersand takes the other for a numeral, which on a bilingual road sign produces a confidently wrong place name.
A building's assembly point is a safe place to stand once you are outside. A ship's muster station is a staffed step in a procedure: you are counted against a roll, briefed, and if necessary allocated to a survival craft, which is why it has a letter or a number and appears on your cabin door card. Both are green, both show grouped figures, and both are called an assembly point in ordinary speech — and treating a muster station as somewhere merely to wait is the misunderstanding drills exist to correct.