Unix in a Nutshell, 4th Edition

Filename Metacharacters

Metacharacters	Meaning
*	Match any string of zero or more characters.
?	Match any single character.
[ abc ...]	Match any one of the enclosed characters; a hyphen can be used to specify a range (e.g., a-z, A-Z, 0–9).
[^abc...]	Match any character not enclosed as above.
{abc,xxx,...}	Expand each comma-separated string inside braces. The strings need not match actual filenames.
~	Home directory for the current user.
~ name	Home directory of user name.
= n	The nth entry in the directory stack, counting from zero.
=-	The last entry in the directory stack.
^ pattern	Matches anything that pattern does not match. To work correctly, pattern must contain ?, *, or [...], and should not contain {...} or ~.

Examples

    % ls new*          
                     Match new and new.1
    % cat ch?          
                     Match ch9 but not ch10
    % vi[D-R]*        
                     Match files that begin with uppercase D through R
    % ls {ch,app}?     
                     Expand, then match ch1, ch2, app1, app2
    % mv info{,.old}   
                     Expands to mv info info.old
    % cd ~tom          
                     Change to tom's home directory

    % touch aa bb cc   
                     Create some files
    % ls ^a*           
                     List nonmatching filenames
    bb  cc

Tip

On modern systems, ranges such as [D-R] are not portable; the system’s locale may include more than just the uppercase letters from D to R in the range.