Robo-FTP User's Guide > Script Programming

Robo-FTP uses a strict wildcard matching scheme for the asterisk "*" and question mark "?" characters.

asterisk "*" will match with zero or more characters, including periods.

question mark "?" will match one character exactly, whether it is an alpha, numeric, or special character (underscores, periods, and so on).

For example, "Report*.xls" will match the following:

Report.xls

Report20130822.xls

Report.sales.q3.47.xls

And "Order_????.doc" will match the following:

Order_0721.doc

Order_ann1.doc

Order_ja.3.doc

... but "Order_????.doc" will not match "Order_34.doc".

The pipe "|" character may be used to combine multiple wildcard patterns into a list. For example "*.jpg|Photo*.jpeg" will match the following:

Photo20131106_086.jpeg

background.jpg

This wildcard behavior applies to both local and remote files.

Important

Some users are familiar with using "*.*" to represent every file in the directory. However, with Robo-FTP, you should use "*" to get every file because "*.*" will only retrieve those files with periods in the name. The "*.*" convention is a hold over from the days of DOS, when every file name consisted of a 1-8 character name, followed by a dot, and then followed by a 0-3 character extension.

Note: Some commands that allow wildcards rely on Robo-FTP's ability to parse directory listings returned by the remote server. Most HTTP/HTTPS sites do not return listings in a supported format and many return no raw directory listings in response to HTTP GET requests based on slash-terminated URLs. Some respond to HEAD requests and are partially compatible. Some supported HTTP listing types like APACHE_DEFAULT include file sizes rounded to the nearest megabyte or kilobyte and are therefore not fully compatible. Contact technical support if you have an urgent need related to a raw directory listing format that is currently unsupported.