FILENAME EXPANSION: *, ?, […]

A leading dot and a slash disappear only in filename expansion: the same pattern “*” is seen by case, but not by expansion itself

Built as a memo rather than a table: the thing worth hanging it up for reads across the room, with the full reference in smaller type below it.

Three sizes in one archive — from a sheet on the fridge to a poster on the wall.

Formats: A4 · A3 · A2
What you get: Print-ready PDFs, one per size, with every letterform converted to outlines — nothing to install, nothing to shift.
Subject: code · everyone · memo · study

Read top to bottom: where the slash and the leading dot go unseen by the asterisk, where the same pattern behaves differently inside case, and what remains as fine print. Everything checked with /bin/sh.

THE QUESTION MARK SEES ANY CHARACTER — EXCEPT THE FIRST DOT

The standard is plain about the question mark: “is a pattern that shall match any character”. Yet a file's leading dot “shall not be matched by” the asterisk or the question mark — only a literal dot at the very start of the pattern.

The exception lives only here: filename expansion “qualified by the rules in 2.14.3 Patterns Used for Filename Expansion”, while the very same pattern in case “according to the rules described in 2.14 Pattern Matching Notation” — with no mention of the dot at all.

On the sheet

Read top to bottom: where the slash and the leading dot go unseen by the asterisk, where the same pattern behaves differently inside case, and what remains as fine print. Everything checked with /bin/sh.
Colour carries meaning, but meaning never rests on colour alone — the sheet reads in black and white.
Nothing about how it was made: the sheet carries only what the reader needs.

Printing

Three sizes in the archive: A4 — 210×297 mm, A3 — 297×420 mm, A2 — 420×594 mm.
All text is converted to outlines. No fonts to install, and nothing shifts on another machine.
White background and sparing fills — it prints on a home printer without draining the cartridge.
Margins of at least 10 mm: a home printer cannot print to the edge.
No stroke thinner than 0.3 mm, so nothing disappears in print.

Why the numbers can be trusted. Every countable number here is computed from data rather than typed in, and the sheet must pass 9 independent checks before it is allowed to build — how many items there are, the order they come in, and the claim in the highlighted box itself. If one fails, there is no file.

FILENAME EXPANSION: *, ?, […]

THE QUESTION MARK SEES ANY CHARACTER — EXCEPT THE FIRST DOT

On the sheet

Printing

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