A character that can stand for a number of different characters. In a search, for instance, if $ is a wildcard meaning any number of characters, then find compute$ will find compute, computer, computers, computed, etc. Again if % is a wildcard meaning any single character in, say, a command to delete some files, then delete fred % will cause fred1, fred2, fred3 to be deleted, but not fred23 (more than one character) nor fred on its own (no character to match). Wildcards are widely used in commands and text searches. See also pattern matching.