The Multi-Level Wildcard: *

The following list summarizes the behavior of the multi-level wildcard (the asterisk, *):

• Matches zero or more occurrences of any character except for the question mark (?).

• Spans across multiple levels in a URL

• Cannot be escaped. Therefore, the backslash character (\) or other characters cannot be used to escape the asterisk, as such \*.

The following examples show the multi-level wildcard character when used with the forward slash (/) as the delimiter character:

• The multi-level wildcard (*) matches zero or more characters, except the question mark, in the resource name, including the forward slash (/). For example, ...B-examp/* matches ...B-examp/b/c/d, but doesn't match ...B-examp/a?b=1

• Multiple consecutive forward slash characters (/) do not match with a single forward slash character (/). For example, ...B-examp/*/A-examp doesn't match ...B-examp/A-examp.

• Any number of trailing forward slash characters (/) are not recognized as part of the resource name. For example, ...B-examp/ and ...B-examp// are treated the same as ...B-examp.

Table C–1 Examples of the Asterisk (*) as the Multi-Level Wildcard

Pattern	Matches	Does Not Match
http://A-examp.com:8080/*	http://A-examp.com:8080 http://A-examp.com:8080/ http://A-examp.com:8080/index.html http://A-examp.com:8080/x.gif	http://B-examp.com:8080/ http://A-examp.com:8090/index.html http://A-examp.com:8080/a?b=1
http://A-examp.com:8080/*.html	http://A-examp.com:8080/index.html http://A-examp.com:8080/pub/ab.html http://A-examp.com:8080/pri/xy.html	http://A-examp.com/index.html http://A-examp.com:8080/x.gif http://B-examp.com/index.html
http://A-examp.com:8080/*/ab	http://A-examp.com:8080/pri/xy/ab/xy/ab http://A-examp.com:8080/xy/ab	http://A-examp.com/ab http://A-examp.com/ab.html http://B-examp.com:8080/ab
http://A-examp.com:8080/ab/*/de	http://A-examp.com:8080/ab/123/de http://A-examp.com:8080/ab/ab/de http://A-examp.com:8080/ab/de/ab/de http://A-examp.com:8080/ab//de	http://A-examp.com:8080/ab/de http://A-examp.com:8090/ab/de http://B-examp.com:8080/ab/de/ab/de