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description: Learnt on TryHackMe's Skynet challenge
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# Wildcards - Basics

Wildcards are symbols or set of symbols which when used in a command can represent a variety of options.\
For example:\
\* => Asterisk in linux means everything. So, if I were to do " cp \* /home/kali/" I would be copying everything in the current directory to /home/kali.\


Wildcards are useful as they reduce human effort. Example, using \* can reduce the effort of manually typing in every file in the existing directory ot be copied.

Other wildcards:\
? => represents each character\
\[] => group of characters\
\~ => home directory\
\- => A hyphen used within \[ ] denotes a range of characters\
\-- => Option flag in various linux tools. Eg: cat **--**&#x68;elp\
\
Reference: [https://linuxhint.com/bash\_wildcard\_tutorial/](https://linuxhint.com/bash_wildcard_tutorial/)

IMPORTANT: When wildcards are used within a filename, it is an insecure practice of administration as the usage of wildcards can cause unforeseen errors in routines, jobs and can cause privilege escalation and exploitation too.
