wildcard

See also: wild card and wild-card

English

wild +‎ card

wildcard (plural wildcards)

(computing) A character that takes the place of any other character or string that is not known or specified.
- 1968, Digital Equipment Corporation, VAX/VMS 319(5864), page 751, Section 2.1.2 Using Wildcard Characters
  A wildcard character is a symbol that you can use with many DCL commands to apply the command to several files at once, rather than specifying each file individually.
If the character * is acting as a wildcard, then the pattern a*m matches each of the words amalgam, atom and alum.
(also written wild card) An uncontrolled or unpredictable element.
- 2008 February 8, Eli Kintisch, "From Gasoline Alleys to Electric Avenues" , Science 319(5864), page 751
  There are several technical wildcards, such as how the larger battery packs--four times larger than those of the Prius--will withstand the rigors of city driving, […]
(also written wild card) An element, often deliberately concealed, which is withheld for contingency.
(sports, card games) Alternative form of wild card.
- 2011 June 28, Piers Newbery, “Wimbledon 2011: Sabine Lisicki beats Marion Bartoli”, in BBC Sport‎:
  German wildcard Sabine Lisicki conquered her nerves to defeat France's Marion Bartoli and take her amazing Wimbledon run into the semi-finals.

A wild card in card games is usually written as two separate words. The computing term is usually written as one compound word.

special character

Armenian: please add this translation if you can
Bulgarian: please add this translation if you can
Chinese:
Mandarin: 通配符 (tōngpèifú)
Esperanto: ĵokero
Finnish: jokerimerkki
French: joker (fr)
German: Platzhalter (de)
Greek: χαρακτήρας μπαλαντέρ m (charaktíras balantér)
Hebrew: please add this translation if you can
Hungarian: helyettesítő karakter
Icelandic: algildistákn n
Japanese: ワイルドカード (wairudokādo)
Korean: please add this translation if you can
Persian: چمنویسه‎ (fa), نویسه جانشین‎ (fa)
Polish: wieloznacznik m
Romanian: joker (ro) m
Russian: знак подстано́вки (znak podstanóvki), шабло́н (ru) m (šablón) (derived adjective may be used in phrases), си́мвол-джо́кер m (símvol-džóker)
Spanish: comodín (es)
Swedish: jokertecken (sv) n
Thai: please add this translation if you can

uncontrolled or unpredictable element

wildcard m (plural wildcards)