"Offering free computer help, hints, and tips to the Internet populace." Now with over 3,820 tips!

Windows 95 and DOS

Expanded DOS Wildcards

SUMMARY: DOS wildcard characters have been expanded with Windows 95.

In DOS, the "*" wildcard normally displays files which match the leading characters before the * symbol. With Windows 95, you can use this wildcard to match all the files which match the trailing characters as well. Combine the two for powerful searches at the dos prompt! For example, doing

DIR *minutes*.TXT

would pull up all .TXT (text) files with the word "minutes" in the filename.

Print This Tip