/glob/, *not* /glohb/ To expand special characters in a wildcarded name. The Unix conventions for filename wildcarding have become sufficiently pervasive that many hackers use some of them in written English, especially in electronic mail or Usenet news on technical topics. Those commonly encountered include the following:
* = zero or more characters (E.g. UN*X)
? = any single character (generally only at the beginning or in the middle of a word)
[] delimits a wildcard matching any of the enclosed characters
{} indicate alternation of comma-separated alternatives, thus
foo{baz,qux}would expand to "foobaz" or "fooqux".
Some examples: "He said his name was [KC]arl" (expresses ambiguity). "I don't read talk.politics.*" (any of the talk.politics subgroups on Usenet). Other examples are given under the entry for X. Note that glob patterns are similar, but not identical, to those used in regexps.
Historical note: The jargon usage derives from "glob", the name of a subprogram that expanded wildcards in archaic pre-Bourne versions of the Unix shell.