Wildcards on Linux: A Practical Guide

Leveraging the power of this small feature

Image from Wallhaven

The usage of wildcards on Linux is a good example of how leveraging a small feature skillfully can make our lives easier.

For instance, if we have downloaded a large video file that was split into lots of small chunks. What is the easiest way to merge them back into one single video? 🤔

If the files were named as follows:

• ironman.mpeg.001
• ironman.mpeg.002
• …
• ironman.mpeg.099

We could merge them through one line of command:

cat ironman.mpeg.0* > ironman.mpeg

Too good to be true? 🙂

In detail, there are 3 points you need to know about the above trick:

1. The cat command (stands for concatenate) is used to combine multiple files.
2. The * is a wildcard which can match any characters. And it will keep the original order of the matched files, so we don’t need to worry that the video will be messy.
3. The > is a trick to redirect the standard output into a file.

So far so good. Isn’t it?