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Two asterisks in two pattern languages, meaning different things — and the mistake matches the wrong files.
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 asterisks in pattern matching, and they mean different things: the glob star matches any characters, the regular-expression star repeats whatever precedes it.
| Glob wildcard | Kleene star | |
|---|---|---|
| Language | Shell filename patterns | Regular expressions |
| Stands for characters | Yes — any run of them | No — it repeats what precedes it |
| Matches everything alone | Yes | No, it needs something to repeat |
| Named after | — | Stephen Kleene, 1951 |
| Relationship (from Symbolwise's records) | Commonly confused with Kleene star — Both are asterisks in pattern matching, and they mean different things: the glob star matches any characters, the regular-expression star repeats whatever precedes it. | Commonly confused with Glob wildcard — Both are asterisks in pattern matching with different meanings — the glob star stands for characters, this one repeats what precedes it. |
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.
POSIX.1-2024, Regular Expressions
The Open Group / IEEE · retrieved 2026-08-01
Cited for the metacharacters of basic and extended regular expressions. Later dialects (PCRE, ECMAScript) extend this and diverge from it; where a record describes a construct POSIX does not define, it says so and is typed as documented practice.
Wikipedia · retrieved 2026-08-01
Tertiary reference. Used for widely-agreed identity, origin and current use, not for contested detail or exact dates.
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.
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.