What are the differences between wildcards and regular expressions?

What are the differences between wildcards and regular expressions?

Wildcards are simple patterns used for matching filenames, while regular expressions are more complex and versatile for text matching.

Can you give me an example of a wildcard pattern?

Sure! A wildcard pattern like *.txt matches all text files in a directory.

And what about a regular expression example?

An example of a regular expression is ^\d{3}-\d{2}-\d{4}$, which matches a Social Security number format.

When should I use wildcards instead of regular expressions?

Use wildcards for simple file matching tasks, and regular expressions for more complex string searching and validation.