In DHCP mode, client host names may contain the wildcard characters ' * ' and ' ? ' . Wildcard characters ' * ' and ' ? ' cannot be specified in netgroup names, nor as part of client host names specified in a netgroup file. These characters can be used to make exports files more compact; for example, *.cs.foo.edu matches all hosts in the domain cs.foo.edu. However, these wildcard characters do not match the dots in a domain name, so that example does not include hosts such as a.b.cs.foo.edu.

When wildcard characters are used, the domain name is mandatory because the NFS server cannot check wildcard host names with DNS or rely on any default domain name definitions.

When wildcard characters are used, client suffix specification is not permitted.