Using Wildcards in Paths

Rather than entering each file by name, using wildcards in the Source path allows you to collect all files of a certain type within one or more directories, or many files from many directories. When specifying file names (or paths) in Microsoft Windows and Unix-like operating systems, the asterisk character (*) substitutes for any zero or more characters, and the question mark (?) substitutes for any one character.

Specifying Paths to collect from

When using wildcards in paths for file collections:

• * is a simple, non-recursive wildcard representing zero or more characters which you can use for paths and file names.
• ** is a recursive wildcard which can only be used with paths, not file names.
• Multiple recursive expressions within the path are not supported. 

note

You can have up to 32 nested symbolic links within a path expression.

So, for example:

• /var/log/** will match all files in /var/log and all files in all child directories, recursively.
• /var/log/**/*.log will match all files whose names end in .log in /var/log and all files in all child directories, recursively.
• /home/*/.bashrc will match all .bashrc files in all user's home directories.
• /home/*/.ssh/**/*.key will match all files ending in .key in all user's .ssh directories in all user's home directories.